America’s Primitive Horse

Species of Equus lived from 5 million years ago until the present. Living sub species include wild horses, like the Kiger Mustang, asses, and zebras. Fossils of Equus are found on every continent except the island continent Australia and Antarctica to which they could not migrate.

For many years, scientists had believed, that the species of horse, that presumably died out some 8,000 years ago on the American continent was a far different smaller type of horse than the one that returned with the Spanish Conquistadors.

However recent discovered fossil specimens of America’s primitve horse like the Hagerman Horse, Equus complicates, Mexican horse (Equus conversidens), Scott's horse (Equus scotti), Western horse (Equus occidentalis), are fossil proof, that the horse, which grazed the grasslands of the Americas, were very similar to the modern Kiger Mustang and evolved in North America (which we knew) to a finished form (which was real news), came with the discovery of Equus lambei.

In September of 1993, came a discovery, that shook the equine world. A couple of placer miners in the Yukon working on Gold Run Creek uncovered in the permafrost layer the remains of a well preserved dun horse. The hair was 4 to 6 cm in length, thick and blond in color. Per conservators examination with blackish brown stocking and a flaxen or possible bi-colored mane, it was hard to tell as only a few strands remained, that hung over the neck; of the hide covered skeleton; The hide is currently at the Canadian Conservation Institute in Ottawa being stabilized however even the stomach contents were still in the gut.. The miners called in a Canadian paleontologist H.M. Lambe. Initially, nobody thought too much about the well preserved, horse in the permafrost layer. It didn't look much different than any other horse that had died and been buried in the mud.

Illustration of the equus lambei. Credit: Canadian Museum of Nature, Ottawa. Watercolour by E. Kish

You can imagine the surprise when analysis revealed that Equus lambei was 25,000 years old! Preserved DNA from the horse carcass demonstrates that the Yukon wild horse is very closely related to the modern horse. Here was proof, that the ancient horse of the America’s, resembled the modern wild horse, that run in the Kiger Herd of the Southern Oregon Deserts or in the Pyror herds of Wyoming (which was real news).

These primitive horse of the America’s over time blazed a trail across the Bering Land Bridge into Asia. These horses spread throughout, not only Asia, but Africa and Europe., they only to return home just 500 years ago on the ships of Spanish explorers and soldiers. Yet, today’s wild horse is erroneously regarded by the government as a feral horse; a non-native species.

Indeed, horses actually evolved in North America and dispersed to the Old World via the Bering Land Bridge. While several of the Eurasian and African species are with us today, the last of American’s Primitive horses died out about 8,000 years ago or did they?

There is some evidence that indicate that the Primitive Horse may have become virtually extinct in the Americas due to over hunting, but no more than five hundred years or so before the horse was reintroduced by the Spanish conquistadors. Indigenous peoples hunted the horse for food; in fact 27 large mammal species became extinct during the same period as horse population dwindled to close to extinction levels in North America.

The population of indigenous peoples in North America prior to the first sustained European contact in 1492 is a matter of active debate. Various estimates of the pre- contact Native population of the continental U.S. and Canada may have been over 12 million. Over the next four centuries, their numbers were reduced to about 237,000 as Natives were almost wiped out by diseases introduced by explorers from Europe. Native population had been reduced to 2.5% of its original numbers, but prior to that these native populations probably hunted to extinction 27 major mammal species. The next four centuries provided a respite for some of the remaining large mammal species like the central plains buffalo.

There is some evidence that North America’s horse population were still intact a few hundred years prior to the coming of Columbus; some of these include:

In the Milwaukee Public Museum there is the skull of a horse excavated in 1936 by W.C. McKern from a mound on Spencer Lake in NW Wisconsin , McKern , said "there

remains no reasonable question as to the legitimacy of the horse skull that was found at a burial association placed in the mound by its builders." C-14 dates on stuff from the mound are all pre-Columbian: AD 890 +/- 65 AD

At North Salem, Massachusetts there is an instantly recognizable stone carving of a horse, that has been dated pre-Columbus .In the Book of Mormon, we find several references:

1 Nephi 18: 25 And it came to pass that we did find upon the land of promise, as we journeyed in the wilderness, that there were abeasts in the forests of every kind, both the cow and the ox, and the ass and the horse… 590 BC

Enos 1: 21 And it came to pass that the people of Nephi did till the land, and araise all manner of grain, and of fruit, and bflocks of herds, and flocks of all manner of cattle of every kind, and goats, and wild goats, and also many horses. B.C. 421

Alma 18:9 And they said unto him: Behold, he is feeding thy ahorses. Now the king had commanded his servants, previous to the time of the watering of their flocks, that they should prepare his horses and chariots… B.C. 63

3 Nephi 3:22 And it came to pass in the *seventeenth year, in the latter end of the year, the proclamation of Lachoneus had gone forth throughout all the face of the land, and they had taken their ahorses, and their chariots, and their cattle, and all their flocks, and their herds…34 B.C

Preserved DNA from the horse carcass of Equus lambei might be able to demonstrates if the Yukon wild horse is closely related to the modern Kiger Mustang. This could provide some evidence, that the ancient horse of the America’s, survived in isolated pocket in North America. Could the KMA obtain copies of the DNA of Equus Lambei and provide them to Gus Cothern, Department of Veterinary Science, University of Kentucky for comparison?

@ Gerald O. Thompson