Talk:Horses in the United States

Expansion thoughts

Article thoughts: What is the goal of this article? Culture, population or...? I'm kind of concerned that it is not focused on anything in particular. However, if the article creators want to clarify where you want to go, I'd be glad to step in and assist. I just fear some sort of duplication of work at horse. I could see a good "History" section working, though, particularly the issues of extinction of the ancestral horses in the Americas and the return via the Colonial Spanish Horse. Wondering if the article could be titled "Horses in the Americas" or "Horses in North America" - much horse history in the USA comes via Mexico... and a small Canadian section on current population and such would not be bloat... Thoughts? Montanabw^(talk) 16:53, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

@Montanabw: I previously had a Dogs in the United States. Obviously we would consider the pre-1800s of the United States as "Americas", just like we consider pre 1947 India and Pakistan together. Researches were not that advanced in those times, we generally use the term "Americas", and the United States is probably the most populated country of whole Americas, thus it is usual to mention these facts whenever we are discussing about the history of the United States. OccultZone (Talk • Contributions • Log) 17:03, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

Hmm. I see how you structured that one and it is an interesting article. I think that's a useful direction. Where would you most like some assistance? Evolution of the horse is probably one good place to look for material. Mustang has a bit of historic material as well, perhaps some of the articles on the various Colonial Spanish Horse breeds may also be useful (Florida Cracker horse, Marsh Tacky, etc...) Montanabw^(talk) 17:36, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

Extinction

All megafawna in Australia Asia Europe and America's disappeared at identical times that highly advanced large hunting stone spear heads were invented or appeared. The idea that all megafawna somehow suddenly disappeared after millions of years due to "weather" is simply not credible in 2018. Read Guns Germs and Steel by Jarryd Diamond among many many books that debunk the weather theory.

Evidence-supported alternative to the extinction theory

The Extinction and return section contains a note referencing a hypothesis that North American horses survied the ice age. The reference for this note is an article published in 1991. This older article has since been supplanted by a 2017 doctoral dissertation which contains a wide variety of evidence supporting the theory of the survival of North American horses through the ice age.

In her doctoral dissertation, Dr. Yvette Running Horse Collin draws on a broad base of evidence including early European reports, art on pre-Columbian structures, fossils, and DNA. Her evidence is far too significant and extensive to be easily dismissed. Her arguments are very convincing regarding the many assumptions, biases, and holes in the prevailing theory of extinction followed by the reintroduction of horses from Europe.

It took several years for the scientific community to accept hard evidence that horse fossils in the Americas predated all horse fossils found elsewhere in the world. Significant changes in theory do not come easily, and it will probably also take years for the scientific community to accept recent compilations of evidence that horses never did become extinct in the Americas. I find Dr. Collin's argument credible that scientists have resisted claims that the horse did not become extinct in the Americas, choosing instead to favor only evidence that supports their favorite theory.

It is only fitting that the Native American views and research also be presented to the reader, even if it is not presented as the current prevailing theory. Dr. Collin's work is of such significance to Native Americans and to the world that it fully deserves this credit.

The following paragraph should be added to the Extinction and return section along with a reference to Dr. Collin's doctoral dissertation:

Native Americans have disputed the theory that horses became extinct in the Americas thousands of years before Europeans began visiting. In her doctoral dissertation, Yvette Running Horse Collin Ph.D. presented evidence that horses never became extinct in the Americas.

See the following references:

https://indiancountrytoday.com/news/yes-world-there-were-horses-in-native-culture-before-the-settlers-came-JGqPrqLmZk-3ka-IBqNWiQ

The Relationship Between the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas and the Horse: Deconstructing a Eurocentric Myth, May 2017 (Doctoral dissertation by Yvette Running Horse Collin Ph.D. at the University of Alaska Fairbanks)

Dr. Collin's dissertation is available at:

https://pqdtopen.proquest.com/doc/1895090520.html?FMT=ABS

https://www.sacredwaysanctuary.org/publications — Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.241.58.47 (talk) 21:50, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for your suggestion, however at this point I only see a doctoral dissertation and per WP:SCHOLARSHIP these are primary sources and we should attempt to rely on peer-reviewed secondary sources whenever possible, and doctoral dissertations are not peer-reviewed. Since this is a very WP:FRINGE point of view I would be careful of including this unless we can find further discussion of this viewpoint in peer-reviewed literature. --hroest 16:23, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

There's a critical discussion of Collin's claims by archaeologist Carl Feagans in his blog at [1], where it's characterized a "pseudoarcheology". The blog itself is likely not a WP:RS; but it's enough to suggest that Collin's claims should be treated with skepticism. Unless there are other authorities that corroborate Collin's position, I'd say it falls squarely in WP:FRINGE. TJRC (talk) 03:55, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

I agree with Hannes. Also, the material itself is not peer reviewed. There is some new evidence for genetic interchange prior to extinction between Eurasian and American horse populations, giving some credence to the "reintroduction" rather than the "invasive species" argument, but there is zero real evidence that horses survived Ice Age extinction, and attempts to do the latter take away credence from the former. Montanabw^(talk) 18:24, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

I am removing this hypothesis from the article. "It has been suggested" not in any peer-reviewed publication, and only reported on by fringe media, and only endorsed by a fringe academic to counter the "invasive species" argument. Carl Feagans does a detailed breakdown of her dissertation It is textbook WP:FRINGE. Revisit if a mainstream respectable news outlet takes the bait. SamuelRiv (talk) 06:40, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. I hadn’t noticed this although I’ve been discussing it with Carl on the Fabook group Fraudulent archaeology wall of shame. Doug Weller talk 09:51, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Should have pinged you. @SamuelRiv: Doug Weller talk 10:46, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Horses were present in Alaska and the Yukon around 5700 years ago

So this study claims that horses survived in Alaska and the Yukon until around 5700 years ago, millenia after they were thought to have gone extinct in that region. Should this article be updated to account for this new information? 24.51.242.175 (talk) 13:34, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

It might be a good idea to wait to see if there are comments on the article. I think it's cited here but can't see the whole article. Doug Weller talk 13:55, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

Murchie et. al. (2021) does not "claim that horses survived ... until around 5700 years ago." They say that they found evidence of the late persistence of Equus and Mammuthus in analysis of sedaDNA (an extremely new technique). They note there are many reasons why sedaDNA analysis can be very inaccurate, and they also give a few reasons why they think the evidence should actually be considered credible and worth investigating further. They are not claiming that there was a ghost range, but rather that it is a possibility worth considering in future research – which is also different from it being a possibility worth considering for people not doing research. This is why it's good to remember that an individual research paper is a primary source and should only be cited in WP if it's either particularly expedient to do so or unusually necessary (or in niche academic fields). SamuelRiv (talk) 01:16, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

@SamuelRiv Thanks for this. Doug Weller talk 09:02, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

For people interested, there is a concurrent article from Feb 2022 that assembles mitochondrial DNA and provides some phylogeny on some of these samples (the youngest being 12,000 years old) in this second publication on the same data -- notably Figure 4 places the samples into a tree that also includes current Eurasian horses. The data shows a separate clade of North American horses with high bootstrap support (100%). --hroest 15:13, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

@Hannes Röst So can remove the existing claim of 5700 years? Doug Weller talk 15:20, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I would remove it. This claim is clearly not even support even by the primary source:

Evidence of a cryptic refugium - The persistence of Equus and Mammuthus until ~9200 cal BP and perhaps as late as ~5700 cal BP (Fig. 2), as suggested by our sedaDNA records, lies well beyond the last dated macrofossils for these taxa (Fig. 7). However, interpreting cryptic populations with sedaDNA necessitates caution. As noted previously, Arnold et al.91 found that although permafrost contains a wealth of well-preserved eDNA, the favourable characteristics of perennially frozen ground increases the likelihood for allochthonous organics to survive transport and be redeposited within younger strata. ...Although we acknowledge that the signals for late megafaunal persistence should be interpreted with careful skepticism, and require additional supporting evidence for verification (particularly given early Holocene thaw unconformities97–99 in the Klondike as identified at Upper Goldbottom and Upper Quartz100), these signals are reasonable and worthy of further study for the following reasons...

Summary - There is also a consistent, multi-site signal of late persistence for Equus and Mammuthus, perhaps surviving some 7000 years longer than their last dated macrofossils in eastern Beringia would indicate.

So there are not secondary sources nor consensus in the field that the horse survived until 5000 BP and even the researchers in the primary source are very cautious about this claim in their article, the strongest claim they make is that they "perhaps" survived that long. --hroest 15:34, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Spread of horses after 1492

New Research Rewrites the History of American Horses. Doug Weller talk 12:10, 20 April 2023 (UTC)