JustMe wrote:We simply are in no wise done yet with discovery. Linda Schele and David Freidel's works showed that plainly enough.
I think few would argue with that. The problem is when unsubstantiated claims are made.
Mike Ash:
Lastly, we must acknowledge that there are archaeological remains which suggest that the horse survived in Book of Mormon times. In 1957, for instance, at Mayapan (a site corresponding to Book of Mormon lands/times) horse remains were discovered at a depth considered to be pre-Columbian. Likewise, in southwest Yucatan, non-Mormon, Henry Chapman Mercer, found what may likely be pre-Columbian horse remains in three caves. Excavations in a cave in the Mayan lowlands in 1978 also turned up horse remains. (Sorenson, 1992, 99.)
In conclusion, there is some evidence that true horses may have survived into Book of Mormon times. There is also precedence for the theory that the Nephites may have renamed a useful quadruped with the name “horse.” Given these evidences, the supposed anachronisms of the term “horse” in the Book of Mormon, cannot be used against the record in the accusation that it is merely fiction. (Emphasis added)
Mormon MesoamericaSubsequent digging has expanded the evidence for an association of humans with horses. But the full story actually goes back to 1895, when American paleontologist Henry C. Mercer went to Yucatan hoping to find remains of Ice Age man. He visited 29 caves in the hill area—the Puuc—of the peninsula and tried stratigraphic excavation in 10 of them. But the results were confused, and he came away disillusioned. He did find horse bones in three caves (Actun Sayab, Actun Lara, and Chektalen). In terms of their visible characteristics, those bones should have been classified as from the Pleistocene American horse species, then called Equus occidentalis L. However, Mercer decided that since the remains were near the surface, they must actually be from the modern horse, Equus equus, that the Spaniards had brought with them to the New World, and so he reported them as such.3 In 1947 Robert T. Hatt repeated Mercer's activities. He found within Actun Lara and one other cave more remains of the American horse (in his day it was called Equus conversidens), along with bones of other extinct animals. Hatt recommended that any future work concentrate on Loltun Cave, where abundant animal and cultural remains could be seen.
It took until 1977 before that recommendation bore fruit. Two Mexican archaeologists carried out a project that included a complete survey of the complex system of subterranean cavities (made by underground water that had dissolved the subsurface limestone). They also did stratigraphic excavation in areas in the Loltun complex not previously visited. The pits they excavated revealed a sequence of 16 layers, which they numbered from the surface downward. Bones of extinct animals (including mammoth) appear in the lowest layers.
Pottery and other cultural materials were found in levels VII and above. But in some of those artifact-bearing strata there were horse bones, even in level II. A radiocarbon date for the beginning of VII turned out to be around 1800 BC. The pottery fragments above that would place some portions in the range of at least 900–400 BC and possibly later. The report on this work concludes with the observation that "something went on here that is still difficult to explain." Some archaeologists have suggested that the horse bones were stirred upward from lower to higher levels by the action of tunneling rodents, but they admit that this explanation is not easy to accept. The statement has also been made that paleontologists will not be pleased at the idea that horses survived to such a late date as to be involved with civilized or near-civilized people whose remains are seen in the ceramic-using levels.5 Surprisingly, the Mexican researchers show no awareness of the horse teeth discovered in 1957 by Carnegie Institution scientists Pollock and Ray. (Some uncomfortable scientific facts seem to need rediscovering time and time again.)
It is odd that the "two Mexican archaeologists" were not named, but the reference for footnote 5 is an article by Peter Schmidt titled "La entrada del hombre a la peninsula de Yucatan." Other sources utilize Schmidt's study of the Loltun caves to draw conclusions about the chronological layers.
The aforementioned book The Ice Age Cave Faunas of North America, page 262, makes this statement:
Stratigraphic and chronological sequences for the excavated units were established, but contradictory data from the field notes imply possible mixing of biological and cultural remains. The sequence as reported is as follows (Schmidt 1988)
1. Levels I through VII are from the Ceramic stage, but extinct animal remains occur at the bottom of Level VII.
2. Level VIII represents the preceramic stage, including some lithic elements and extinct fauna. The boundary between the Pleistocene or the Holocene may be located here or at the bottom of Level VII.
Note that the author is utilizing information provided in Schmidt's report. This statement clarifies that the extinct animal remains were at the BOTTOM of Level VII, which is the possible demarcation for the Pleistocene Era. In fact, elsewhere in this same text, it is asserted that, indeed, Level VII is Pleistocene in dating:
Loltun Cave is found at 40m. elevation in the southeastern portion of the state of Yucatan., 7 m. south of Oxkutzcab. Several publications about the studies undertaken on the remains from this cave are available, including Hatt and his collaborators (Hatt et al 1953) and by personnel of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (Velazquez 1980, Alvarez 1982, Alvarez and Polaco 1982, Alvarez and Arroyo-Cabrales and Alvarez 1990, Pollaco et al 1998, see also Chapter 10 of this volume). The known stratigraphy contains sixteen levels; sediments from levels VII to XVI are Pleistocene in age. (page 285)
Thanks to the help of Chris Smith, who provided scans of the text, and John Williams, who translated the text from Spanish, I was able to obtain the pertinent sections of the Peter Schmidt text. First, let’s review the portion of the previously quoted Peterson essay that refers to this research:
“It took until 1977 before that recommendation bore fruit. Two Mexican archaeologists carried out a project that included a complete survey of the complex system of subterranean cavities (made by underground water that had dissolved the subsurface limestone). They also did stratigraphic excavation in areas in the Loltun complex not previously visited. The pits they excavated revealed a sequence of 16 layers, which they numbered from the surface downward. Bones of extinct animals (including mammoth) appear in the lowest layers.
Pottery and other cultural materials were found in levels VII and above. But in some of those artifact-bearing strata there were horse bones, even in level II. A radiocarbon date for the beginning of VII turned out to be around 1800 BC. The pottery fragments above that would place some portions in the range of at least 900–400 BC and possibly later. The report on this work concludes with the observation that "something went on here that is still difficult to explain." Some archaeologists have suggested that the horse bones were stirred upward from lower to higher levels by the action of tunneling rodents, but they admit that this explanation is not easy to accept. The statement has also been made that paleontologists will not be pleased at the idea that horses survived to such a late date as to be involved with civilized or near-civilized people whose remains are seen in the ceramic-using levels. Surprisingly, the Mexican researchers show no awareness of the horse teeth discovered in 1957 by Carnegie Institution scientists Pollock and Ray. (Some uncomfortable scientific facts seem to need rediscovering time and time again.)”
Now here’s the pertinent section from the Schmidt research, with important sections bolded:
”Critical for associating human industry with pleistocene fauna is layer VIII, where there is no ceramic but where lithic tools and many horse remains appear. But unfortunately there are horse [remains] in layers VII and VI and also a very small quantity in layer V, all three containing ceramics.
Obviously there is some disturbance in these layers. Rodents as well as the most common mammals from the cave stand out in studies of the cave's fauna.
The only radiocarbon dating published (1805 +- 150) BC was taken using a combined sample of various pieces of charcoal and belongs to the area of contact between layers VII and VIII.
The stratigraphic and faunal analyses clearly establish that the excavated sediments must have accumulated from the Pleistocene era to the present, with heavy interference at least from layer VII on up. Only layer VIII remains a possible area of occurrence of both lithic material and pleistocene bones in a primary context. Unfortunately in neither this layer or others is there direct association of human tools with the bones, nor are there fire holes where charcoal or bones were clearly used or worked. The same is true with layer VII (El Tunel) (p 253).”
[After discussing flora found in the cave]. The situation in terms of fauna is more complicated. The majority of the animals discovered are represented since the Pleistocene era, having their origins in some of the neo-arctic and neotropical fauna. Studying in detail only the rodents, a sequence of types of vegetation the caves' surroundings was established that is very similar to that accomplished by means of pollen: layers before XIII-B, grassland; layers XIII and XII-L, medium jungle; layers XII-K to VIII, once again grassland; and from VII to I the current vegetation. These changes were not sudden but rather constitute advances and declines of the jungle with greater or lesser extension of the grasslands, where large animals and certain specialized rodents lived.
Once again the end of pleistocene conditions appears to be situated in the region of layers VIII and VII of the well "El Toro." Of the four extinct pleistocene species (Mammut americanum, Canis diris, Tanupolama, and Equus conversidens) and the three whose distribution receded more to the north (Bison bison, Canis lupus, and Canis latrans) five did not occur above layer VIII in "El Toro" and layer VII-F in "El Tunel." [The exceptions are the bison with three problematic examples in layer VI of "El Toro" and the horse, with 44 fragments in layers VII, VI, and V (all with ceramics), in "El Toro" and 59 fragments en the subdivisions VII-B and VII-E in "El Tunel." What is clear is that the presence of the horse Equus conversidens alone cannot be sufficient to declare a layer as pleistocene in its entirety, given the long series of combinations of this species with later materials in the collections of Mercer, Hatt, and others. Something happened here that is still difficult to explain. Horse bones seem to have formed the last layer of the Pleistocene or Epi-Pleistocene in various caves, or they must have been dragged into the caves decades up to millenia later, something that is difficult to accept given the climatic conditions of the Tropics. If we postulate a longer survival of the horse than that of other pleistocene animals to explain this situation, it would have to extend until almost the beginning of the ceramic epoch, which would not please the paleontologists.
Lithic Loltun also has not been been very amenable [to exploration]. There are very few well-defined techniques for dealing with stone fragments and cores; such techniques have varied widely from the beginning to the end. One of the reasons may derive from the uselessness of local flint for fine work. In the layers considered to be pre-ceramic there are very few tools: scrapers, shavers, knife-scrapers, jagged-edged tools (denticulados), and one sharp-ended tool (punta), all being of a very reduced size and totaling no more than 11 objects. Production techniques are limited to marginal finishing using stone chips and plates as the primary materials.
It may seem excessive the detail with which we have described the evidence that is so hard to understand about Loltun. But I believe that it is necessary because of the site's possible importance and because the findings have become widely known without specifying that the usable data until now are few and weak. Loltun has been incorporated into general theories about Mayan archeology and about the origins of humans in Mesoamerica.
Some authors limit themselves to mentioning an association between stone artifacts and Pleistocene animal bones, for others there is an association [p. 256] with Mammoth bones, and in a summary of the most relevant Mayan archeology in the last few years the long stratified sequence and the appearance of ceramics supposedly dated in 1800 BC is indicated. Regarding this last date, we must emphasize that among the first pots found in layer VII of "El Toro" there appear some fragments having characteristics of early pottery, but comparisons with material from Chiapas and from the Swazey complex in Belize have not given positive results, so the most probable date is Middle Preclassic.
The preceramic lithic material from Loltun has been tentatively assigned, because of it primitive and irregular character, to very early stages, before 14,000 BC. Others place it in the transition between the Pleistocene and Holocene and compare it with the complex of La Piedra del Coyote in the Guatemalan highlands and phase I of the Cave of Santa Martha in Chiapas. In this case it would have an age somewhere around 8000 to 10000 BC. It would be a manifestation of the Superior Cenolithic or until the Proto-Neolithic, or in other words, the Archaic.
In view of the evidence I have described, I lean toward the second possibility, and it is possible that its antiquity could be less, if we consider the continuity of the lithic of the Preclassic.
There is much left to do at Loltun. We are sure that there is an association of humans with pleistocene animals, but we must look in the part that has not yet been excavated for unmistakable evidence, where the strata have not been disturbed, where there is direct association of tools and bones, and direct action with the animals. We lack explicit traces of human visits to the cave as a home, places of work, or remains of other cultural elements besides only stone chips, and in the end, remains of prehistoric humans themselves." (pp. 254-55)
My first comment is that the Peterson/Sorenson summary in misleading in that it states that Schmidt said the possibility that horse bones were stirred upward from lower levels to higher levels by tunneling rodents is “not easy to accept”. This is not true. Schmidt accepts that the tunneling rodents disturbed the layers, as does Mercer.
The more fundamentally misleading context of the Peterson/Sorenson statement is that it implies that Schmidt did not believe that the horse remains dated from the Pleistocene era. Yet Schmidt made it obvious that he believes that the later layers were disrupted and that “only layer VIII remains a possible area of occurrence of both lithic material and pleistocene bones in a primary context.” This is consistent with the conclusions arrived at in the Ice Age Fauna text quoted above.
See link for full entry.
It seems to me that beastie has done a far more thorough job of bringing us the facts (love or hate her), but since Mike occasionally posts here, he might like to respond and give us some pause to reconsider.
In view of the above, Mike's statement:
In conclusion, there is some evidence that true horses may have survived into Book of Mormon times.
Could be re-written:
In conclusion, there is no yet accepted evidence that true horses may have survived into Book of Mormon times, but failing that - we always have the Tapir.