While
struggling with some of the issues involving horses and the Book of
Mormon, I recently shared a wish for an unusual Christmas gift, a
horse. Specifically, I wished for an ancient American horse that
might help clarify this scientific challenge for the Book of Mormon.
Here's what I asked for on Dec. 21 in comments on a post at my blog,
Mormanity:
Christmas
gift idea for your humble blogger here: This Christmas, I'd like a
horse. A Mesoamerican one, preferably. Doesn't have to be in working
condition and can be decrepit and rather old, but not too old--about
2000 years old will do just fine. Should be free of problems caused
by tunneling cave rats and overly eager apologists. If you find one
that meets these simple criteria, it will be an even merrier
Christmas than normal.
The
comment about tunneling cave rats refers to the possible cause for
apparently very old horse bones being found in newer pre-Columbian
layers of a Mesoamerican cave. It is entirely possible that some of
the scant apparent evidence for horses in Mesoamerica in Book of
Mormon times is due to disturbances that brought older remains into
new layers, and tunneling cave rats is one possible cause.
While
struggling with the various issues related to horses and hoping for
some new Mesoamerican finds, I dug into a new gift book that I
received recently which provides some valuable new information on
horses. The book is Science
and the Book of Mormon: Cureloms, Cumoms, Horses, and More
(KCT & Associates: Laguna Niguel, CA, 2010) by Dr. Wade E.
Miller, a retired professor of geology at Brigham Young University
who has done 40 years of research in geology and paleontology, and he
continues to be actively involved in multiple field projects in
Mexico and the U.S. As an expert on paleontology and dinosaurs, he's
been on a variety of TV shows and documentaries, in addition to
serving as an advisor to several museums and to the US Bureau of Land
Management.
This
softbound volume has some hard-hitting information with good
documentation. In the course of this book, Dr. Miller explores
candidates for what the Book of Mormon calls elephants, cureloms,
cumoms, and, of course, horses. He observes that the latest dated
remains of a species need not correspond with the actual extinction
date, since pockets of the animals may have survived for centuries or
thousands of years without leaving remains that we have found so far.
Dr.
Miller proposes that the "elephants" mentioned in the
ancient Book of Ether (Ether 9:19) could have been the Columbian
mammoth. Based on the research he has done in Mexico, it is the most
numerous of late Pleistocene fossils in some areas. Evidence from
many sources confirms that humans interacted with mammoths in North
America. As early as 1952, one scientist concluded that, "There
can no longer be any reasonable doubt that man and elephant coexisted
in America." (L.H. Johnson, "Men and Elephants in America,"
Scientific
Monthly,
75 (1952): 215-221.) Many more finds since that time confirm that
humans associated with mammoths, and increasing evidence points to
the survival of some mammoths in some regions past the end of the
Pleistocene, with dates later than 3,000 B.C. reported by one source.
An even later report of about 2,000 years ago in Florida is
interesting, but other scientists feel that the Florida data is
invalid.
Dr.
Miller's pick for one of the curelom and cumom is the llama, for
which fossils in North America allow the llama to have existed in
Mesoamerica in Jaredite times in the Book of Mormon. Dr. Miller gets
into some of those details and provides references. Interesting.
As
for my hoped-for Christmas gift horse, Miller's book provides more
details than I have previously encountered from LDS scholars, enough
to possibly count as the Christmas gift I was looking for in this
book that I received as a gift. Here are some relevant excerpts from
page 80:
During
the Pleistocene epoch there were many species of horses and a few
asses. It is accepted by all paleontologists that these animals
existed in North America until the end of this time, 10,000 to 12,000
years ago. Along with other Ice Age mammals listed above, evidences
demonstrate that both the horse and ass survived for an appreciable
time later. Some paleontologists are reluctant to accept this,
though.
It's
hard to change old ideas once they become ingrained. However, more
and more paleontologists, as well as archeologists, do accept some
younger dates for the last native horses in America. A number of
Carbon-14 dates on horse fossils, especially in the United States,
show ages extending well past the close of the Pleistocene.
Ages
obtained from a variety of locations are as follows (these are all in
years before the present): 8,240 (Mead and Meltzer, 1984, p. 446);
7,000; 8,000 (Hester, 1960 p. 70); 6,160 (Marcus and Berger, 1984, p.
171); ~5,000 (Martin and Webb, 1974, p. 144); 3,800 (Schmidt, 1988,
p. 253). A date of 2,167 B.C. was obtained based on horse bones from
the northern part of the Yucatan Peninsula according to John Sorenson
(Pers. Comm.).
Miller
then proposes that small scattered populations of horses and asses,
especially in remote areas, could have survived until shortly before
they were reintroduced by the Spaniards. This hypothesis is based in
part on some recent Carbon-14 measurements, mostly unpublished, from
work tied to a former physics professor at BYU, Dr. Steven E. Jones.
However, Miller does not appear to be merely relying on Steve Jones
alone, but says, "I later worked with him on these" (p.
82).
These
unpublished dates for horse fossils include 5,890 B.C. from Pratt
Cave in Texas; 830 B.C. from southern Saskatchewan, Canada; 815 A.D.
from Ontario, Canada; and 1,260-1,400 A.D. from Wolf Spider Cave,
Colorado. There is also a specimen from Horsethief Cave in Wyoming
that was dated using a thermoluminescence method to 1,120 B.C.
Miller
notes that young dates for horse fossils are not yet common. However,
reports of primitive man in association with the horse are common, he
feels, citing authors from the 1800s such as Heilprin and Mercer, and
more recent reports for various species of Equus
associated with humans reported by Mexican paleontologists Joaquin
Arroyo-Cabrales and Oscar Polaco from several Yucatan caves, along
with several other reports. In light of this growing body of
evidence, Miller feels that there is evidence to show that the horse
and the ox were in the Americas at the time they were said to be here
in the Book of Mormon.
I have
some more exploring to do in sorting through the evidence cited by
Miller, but feel like the case for actual horses in the Book of
Mormon (as opposed to, say, tasty tapir flocks) may be stronger that
I previously supposed, though it's a gift horse that we should look
squarely in the mouth. Evidence for late pockets of actual horses
won't resolve a variety of other questions that can then be asked,
but certainly the challenge to the Book of Mormon has become much
different than it was in Joseph's day, when it wasn't yet even known
that horses (as well as elephants) had been on the continent
anciently. After all, if Joseph were fabricating the Book of Mormon
based on what was known in his day, why mention ancient horses at all
when they were widely understood to have been introduced recently by
Europeans coming to the New World? For example, in describing the
zoology of South America, John Bigland and Jedidiah Morse wrote the
following in A
Geographical and Historical View of the World,
vol. 5 (Boston: Thomas Wait and Company, 1811), p. 457:
It is
well known that neither horses nor horned cattle existed in any part
of the new continent previous to its discovery by the Spaniards; and
the surprising herds with which the country is now overspread, have
multiplied from a few that were carried over and turned loose by the
first settlers.
If
Joseph were drawing upon his own knowledge and the scholarship of
others, it would have been foolhardy to mention horses in the
Americas anciently. Now that we know horses were here anciently,
their mention in the Book of Mormon is far less problematic today
than it was in 1830, though it is still a problem requiring further
investigation.
I
especially look forward to more published information on the
radiocarbon dating results that Wade Miller and Steven Jones have
worked on. I also look forward to further finds that might help us
understand these issues more accurately.
Jeff Lindsay has been defending the Church on the Internet since 1994, when he launched his
LDSFAQ website under JeffLindsay.com. He has also long been blogging about LDS matters on
the blog Mormanity (mormanity.blogspot.com). Jeff is a longtime resident of Appleton,
Wisconsin, who recently moved to Shanghai, China, with his wife, Kendra.
He works for an Asian corporation as head of intellectual property. Jeff and Kendra are the parents of 4 boys, 3 married and the the youngest on a mission.
He is a former innovation and IP consultant, a former professor, and former Corporate Patent
Strategist and Senior Research Fellow for a multinational corporation.
Jeff Lindsay, Cheryl Perkins and Mukund Karanjikar are authors of the book Conquering
Innovation Fatigue (John Wiley & Sons, 2009).
Jeff has a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Brigham Young University and is a registered US
patent agent. He has more than 100 granted US patents and is author of numerous publications.
Jeff's hobbies include photography, amateur magic, writing, and Mandarin Chinese.