FAIR releases online videos

[_Jersey Girl]

Excuse me...the video list refers to "the scholars". Scholars in what, exactly? And how do their credentials relate to the subject matter they've addressed?

Jersey Girl

[_Zakuska]

Not sure callifornia kid. But what I can see is Beastie and TD... saying "The Thinking has been done." They'd rather assume things and not question previsouly held notions.

Until the Bones are carbon dated the question is still open. At least Farms is putting their money where their Keyboard is. I'm about 99% possitive the reason the wisconson bones show up in that science now web site Beastie linked is because Farms made an inquiry into it. that's how the Horse skull that you are writing to the museum about finally got carbon dated. Because someone with a vested intrest in the question finally asked the right person. See that's the difference I see with Farms scholarship and the critics Scholarship.... they have the financial backing to actually find the answers and not rely on assumptions etc.

Zakuska, why are you still interested in horses? I thought you'd decided that everyone needed to be looking for dogs?

I'm so confused!

Wered you get that idea? My thread on "Sacred Dogs"?

[_Moniker]

Not sure callifornia kid. But what I can see is Beastie and TD... saying "The Thinking has been done." They'd rather assume things and not question previsouly held notions.

Until the Bones are carbon dated the question is still open. At least Farms is putting their money where their Keyboard is. I'm about 99% possitive the reason the wisconson bones show up in that science now web site Beastie linked is because Farms made an inquiry into it. that's how the Horse skull that you are writing to the museum about finally got carbon dated. Because someone with a vested intrest in the question finally asked the right person. See that's the difference I see with Farms scholarship and the critics Scholarship.... they have the financial backing to actually find the answers and not rely on assumptions etc.

Zakuska, why are you still interested in horses? I thought you'd decided that everyone needed to be looking for dogs?

I'm so confused!

Wered you get that idea? My thread on "Sacred Dogs"?

Possibly...

[_CaliforniaKid]

Just how long have you been waiting for this information, zak? I've heard it talked about for YEARS on the internet. And still no sign of it. It's kind of like the second coming.

ROFL!

[_Zakuska]

Heres some more information on these particular horse remains... and the Battles being raged about it: (This is more recent... from 2004 not 2001 as the first article was)

Hester did report that horse remains from St. Petersburg, Florida, had been dated to 2040 BP (before present), or just before the time of Christ. While he calls this date "anomalous" and says that it is "suspect" because "the strata are unconsolidated and the fauna may have been redeposited,"61 it is difficult to see how stratigraphic uncertainties would affect radiocarbon dating.

Larson maintains, against Sorenson, that Ripley Bullen did not claim that horses could have survived until 3000 BC in Florida. Rather, he says, "Bullen spoke in general of the extinction of mammals in Florida" and, contrary to Sorenson's assertion, "not specifically of the horse" (p. 191). We disagree. A careful reading of the document in question indicates that Bullen did include horses in his general statement about the possible survival of Pleistocene fauna. Sorenson never said that Bullen believes in such survival, merely that he allows that it might have occurred.

Larson claims that Sorenson takes Paul Martin's statement about the theoretical possibility of horses and certain other Pleistocene fauna surviving to as late as 2000 BC out of context, since, in fact, Martin says that only extinct species of bison have been indisputably demonstrated to have survived into the postglacial period (p. 191). But Martin's view of the current state of the empirical evidence (with which, by the way, Sorenson tells us he tends to agree) does not rule out (even for him) the theoretical possibility of future evidence that may mandate revision of current ideas. Dr. Sorenson is only saying that Martin did not regard the question as definitively closed. And his reading of Martin appears to us to be correct.62

Although horses are generally thought to have been extinct by the Preclassic period, several Mesoamerican sites have yielded horse remains found in a context suggesting later survival. Mercer excavated horse remains that showed no signs of fossilization from several sites in southwest Yucatan.63 Additional tooth and other bone fragments, heavily encrusted with lime, were discovered by Robert T. Hatt at another site in Yucatan that may have been pre-Columbian.64

As his next target, Larson turns to a find of horse teeth from a site in the Yucatan called Mayapan (p. 192). Larson claims that Sorenson "misrepresented the evidence" (p. 192). The find is not really pre-Columbian, he says, but prehistoric Pleistocene. He points out that the horse teeth were "heavily mineralized [fossilized]" (p. 192) and were the only materials at the site showing that characteristic. He notes that "the reporting scholar did not suggest that the Mayan people had ever seen a pre-Columbian horse, but that in Pleistocene times horses lived in Yucatán, and that 'the tooth fragments reported here could have been transported in fossil condition' by the Maya as curiosities" (p. 192). Thus, Larson concludes, Sorenson's "assertion about pre-Columbian horses must be corrected to refer to ancient Pleistocene horses" (p. 192), which would put them thousands of years before the Jaredites (pp. 31–32).

We are at a loss, however, to see where the article "misrepresented the evidence." Every item that Larson cites as a corrective to it is mentioned in it. (It is true that Sorenson was unimpressed with the idea of Pleistocene curios, for which, he says, the biologist proposing the idea can cite neither evidence nor precedents.) Furthermore, although Larson seems to be saying that Sorenson misapplied the term pre-Columbian to the Mayapan finds, the term comes from the original "reporting scholar" himself—Clayton Ray, of the Museum of Comparative Zoology in Cambridge, Massachusetts—who was using it to say, at a minimum, that the horse remains do not derive from the colonial or postcolonial period. The title of Ray's article, from the Journal of Mammalogy, is "Pre-Columbian Horses from Yucatan," and he applies the label "pre-Columbian" not only to the discoveries at Mayapan but to those made in three caves in southwestern Yucatan—excavated by H. C. Mercer and later studied by Hatt—in which horse material was found associated with pottery and showing no sign of fossilization. Ray concludes, "The [Mayapan] tooth fragments reported here could have been transported in fossil condition as curios by the Mayans, but the more numerous horse remains reported by Hatt and Mercer (if truly pre-Columbian) could scarcely be explained in this manner."65

Incidentally, horse bones were also found in association with cultural remains at Loltun Cave in northern Yucatan. There, archaeologists identified a sequence of sixteen layers numbered from the surface downward and obtained a radiocarbon date of about 1800 BC from charcoal fragments found between layers VIII and VII.66 Significantly, forty-four fragments of horse remains were found in the layers VII, VI, V, and II—above all in association with pottery. But the earliest Maya ceramics in the region date no earlier than 900–400 BC.67 Archaeologist Peter Schmidt notes,

What clearly results is that the presence of the horse, Equus conversidens, alone is not sufficient evidence to declare a stratum totally Pleistocene given the long series of combinations of this species with later materials in the collections of Mercer, Hatt and others. Something went on here that is difficult to explain. [Difficult to explain, that is, in light of current theories about the extinction of the pre-Columbian horse.] If a late survival of the horse and other Pleistocene animals is postulated as an explanation of the situation, it would have to be extended almost to the beginnings of the ceramic era, which will not please the paleontologists.68

The point here is, simply, that the question of pre-Columbian horses is not closed. That's all. And it seems to us that Professor Sorenson's caution here is better grounded than Larson's certainty.69

59 Simon J. M. Davis, The Archaeology of Animals (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 24. We would like to thank John A. Tvedtnes for providing this reference.
60 Ibid., 23.
61 Hester, "Late Pleistocene Extinction," 65; cf. 70.
62 On the issue of the horse, Sorenson states, "Larson's premature certainty on questionable points recalls Ferguson's own premature certainties. On [p. 190], Larson says, 'No depictions of the horse occur in any pre-Columbian art.' Maybe, and maybe not. There are those (non-Mormons) who believe there are such depictions. Larson just happens not to know enough about the matter. A great deal of care and effort deserves to be exercised in further research before the question can be settled. ('Negative evidence' is particularly problematic in any area of science.) Merely to quote some authority who agrees with one's presupposition is not a substitute for the exhaustive study that still ought to be done." Sorenson to Peterson, 23 April 1996.
63 Henry C. Mercer, The Hill-Caves of Yucatan: A Search for Evidence of Man's Antiquity in the Caverns of Central America (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1896), 172.
64 Robert T. Hatt et al., "Faunal and Archeological Researches in Yucatan Caves," Cranbrook Institute of Science Bulletin 33 (1953): 71–72.
65 Clayton E. Ray, "Pre-Columbian Horses from Yucatan," Journal of Mammalogy 38/2 (1957): 278, emphasis added.
66 Peter J. Schmidt, "La entrada del hombre a la Península de Yucatán," in Orígenes del Hombre Americano (Seminario), comp. Alba González Jácome (México: Secretaría de Educación Pública, 1988), 253. We would like to thank John L. Sorenson for providing us with a copy of this reference.
67 Ibid.
68 Ibid., 255, translation by John L. Sorenson.
69 On this side issue, Sorenson claims: "Nowhere have I ever claimed that 'horses' in the sense of Equus equus (the horse as we know it colloquially) survived from the Pleistocene down to Book of Mormon times. My position has always been that other animals could have been termed 'horses' in the English translation of the Book of Mormon yet that perhaps a true Equus form survived down to 'historical' times. The FARMS Update of June 1984, 'Once More: The Horse,' ended with the appropriate qualification (penned by me) to which I still adhere: 'A careful study of the reported remains . . . ought to be done. Radiometric dating might also be worthwhile. Full references to related material will be furnished to any qualified person who desires to carry out such a study.' No such study has yet been done, regardless of the confidence with which establishment scholars may claim that late survivals were impossible. They have never examined the relevant scientific evidence." Sorenson to Peterson, 23 April 1996.
70 Kamar Al-Shimas, The Mexican Southland (Fowler, IN: Benton Review Shop, 1922), 112.

http://farms.BYU.edu/display.php?table=review&id=531

So Beastie, your China Vase theory doesn't hold water and we arnt talking about bone fragments with paintings on them. We are talking about numerous remains here. (44) Here Farms Scholars are arguing with Archeologists about who reported what. The critics as usuaul are saying that the Farms people made things up to support the Book of Mormon. And the Farms people are showing that it was the original articles who claimed Pre-Columbian horses here.

[_beastie]

Zak,

Just a word of advise in regards to the Schmidt source. Never rely on Sorenson's summary of a source. Always try to go to the original source to verify his assertions. He has a demonstrable history of distorting sources.

In regards to the Ray/mercer assertion: without more information, there is no way we can discount the "curios" argument. What is "numerous", for example?

[_Zakuska]

So lets see... the person who is telling me she is 100% sure like the scientists that these horse bones (significantly 44 seperate items) which to all accounts haven't been C14 dated because the scientists "just assumed" but found in stratum which has been C14 dated to 1800BC - 400BC, is now lecturing me on John Sorensons translated summary? Who is being more cautious? The scientists and beastie with all their assumptions or John Sorenson who is saying that with out actually dating these items we can't really say one way or the other?

Second if you notice, its not Sorenson who said "Numerous" it was the original Scholar. (Clayton E. Ray)

"The [Mayapan] tooth fragments reported here could have been transported in fossil condition as curios by the Mayans, but the more numerous horse remains reported by Hatt and Mercer (if truly pre-Columbian) could scarcely be explained in this manner."65

65 Clayton E. Ray, "Pre-Columbian Horses from Yucatan," Journal of Mammalogy 38/2 (1957): 278, emphasis added.

If we follow the Schmidt source, (66) apparently "Numerous" is 44 items. But then on second thought I might be conflating the two digs.

You know I think I will go check out these original sources.

Mercer
Hatt
Clayton
Schmidt

[_beastie]

So lets see... the person who is telling me she is 100% sure like the scientists that these horse bones (significantly 44 seperate items) which to all accounts haven't been C14 dated because the scientists "just assumed" but found in stratum which has been C14 dated to 1800BC - 400BC, is now lecturing me on John Sorensons translated summary? Who is being more cautious? The scientists and beastie with all their assumptions or John Sorenson who is saying that with out actually dating these items we can't really say one way or the other?

Second if you notice, its not Sorenson who said "Numerous" it was the original Scholar. (Clayton E. Ray)

"The [Mayapan] tooth fragments reported here could have been transported in fossil condition as curios by the Mayans, but the more numerous horse remains reported by Hatt and Mercer (if truly pre-Columbian) could scarcely be explained in this manner."65

65 Clayton E. Ray, "Pre-Columbian Horses from Yucatan," Journal of Mammalogy 38/2 (1957): 278, emphasis added.

If we follow the Schmidt source, (66) apparently "Numerous" is 44 items. But then on second thought I might be conflating the two digs.

You know I think I will go check out these original sources.

We already have the Ray source. It would be great if you could check out the others. I wish I had access to a university system to do so myself.

But there are possible explanations - one is that the strata were disturbed for some reason (I don't buy the rodent reason, but there are other reasons strata can be disturbed). Another could be that some of the bone fragments originally assumed to be equus might be actually be something else. Or what one person deemed too "numerous" to qualify as curious is totally subjective and open to disagreement. There are other, far more likely possibilities than that there really were horses during the Book of Mormon time period.

So, zak, let's return to TD's question. Would you insist on carbon dating for a dinosaur bone she happened upon in her backyard?

[_beastie]

Here's a reference to the Loltun caves:

http://books.google.com/books?id=VLTy_m ... ins&source
=web&ots=9xdLGbqlE6&sig=7BfewBXK6KN-_AqFPpNCqZHYxzI

Currently only one site in Mesoamerica supports the hypothesis of human occupation in lowland environments before 12,000 years ago. In the Puuc Hills of Northern Yucatan, the lowest levels of excavations reported by R. Velazquez at Loltun Cave have produced some crude stone and bone tools along with the remains of horse, mastodon, and other now extinct Pleistocene mammals. Felines, deer, and numerous rodents round out the archaeological assemblage. No radiocarbon dates have been forthcoming for this proposed early components that underlies later ceramic occupations. On the basis of stone tool typology and faunal association, MacNeish has proposed that the lower levels of Loltun Cave are somewhere between 40,000 and 15,000 years old.

I would say this reference presents another possibility: the earlier archaeologists were simply mistaken.

[_CaliforniaKid]

Hello everyone,

I have put in ILL requests for all four of these sources. When they arrive I will digitize the relevant pages and make them available to anyone who's interested. Hopefully they should provide some much-needed clarity on the horse issue.

Best,

-Chris