🐎 New research rewrites the history of horses in the North American West! 🌍 Native Americans spread the animals across the region before Europeans arrived, according to archaeological evidence and Indigenous knowledge. Horses were present in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains by the early 17th century, much earlier than previously thought.
#HorseHistory #NativeAmerican #Archaeology #IndigenousKnowledge
Regarding Central and South America, Columbus & the Spanish conquistadors introduced them.
"Horses were brought to the West Indies by Columbus on his second voyage in 1493"
"Horses arrived in mainland South America starting in 1531"
@nemo Wait. We didn't think that before?
In Texas History class (yes it's a full year in middle school) we learned about the Plains Indians (forgive me if there is better terminology now; it's been 25 years since I was in that class). And in order to have fully developed economy/society revolving around horses by the mid 1700s, they had to have horses well before that. If you'd asked me yesterday when the Comanche and Apache people got horses, I'd have guessed sometime between 1550 and 1650.
What could possibly have made previous experts conclude it was later than that?
Heck, the Spanish governor of New Mexico made a trip to California in 1605 (left an inscription at El Morro). Clearly they had horses. Their indigenous guides had horses. And horses breed FAST. So if southwestern tribes acquired a few, of course they would spread (and some would escape and breed too). And high plains are *right there*. What mechanism did scientists propose to explain why this wouldn't happen?
@nemo I may get a bit enthusiastic about history.
And rock formations.
Imagine the refreshment of finding water after days of dusty travel. A reliable waterhole hidden at the base of a sandstone bluff made El Morro (the headland) a popular campsite for hundreds of years. Here, ancestral Puebloans, Spanish, and American travelers carved over 2,000 signatures, dates, messages, and petroglyphs. Make El Morro National Monument a stopping point on your travels.
@DrKylara I think the main message here is that the north west had horses before the white settlers or the spaniards arrived. For example the first horses in the indies central america was by columbus and the south american mainland by the conquistadors.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU0wXXWPU3U
I learned this first a loong time ago in this game :D
Sorry it's late here hence my reply might be a little bit weird
The mechanisms of colonization and racism.
Most everything we were taught about Native Americans came from the earliest colonizers and (disease-spreading) missionaries who viewed Native Americans as dirty, savage heathens.
Ofc they wouldn't recognize or acknowledge anything about them that was contrary to that narrative.
Wild horses are disappearing before our eyes.
Bc they compete with livestock for grazing areas, the powerful ranching lobby has paid off our govt departments of Interior and Bureau of Land Management to round them all up, with most of them being sent to Canada and Mexican slaughter houses.
Previous roundups have resulted in 60k horses now held in overcrowded, filthy and dangerous holding pens; many on private ranchers lands where they are paid thousands of our tax dollars to hold them.
Ranchers also help with the roundups, again being paid with our tax dollars.
These same ranchers are leasing our public lands too graze their livestock on, for pennies on the dollar value.
It's costing us taxpayers millions of dollars a year to wipe out our iconic wild horses, many herds with direct lineage back to the original Spanish horses first brought here.
Contrary to the lies and propaganda from ranchers and the BLM, our wild horses are not starving; they are healthy and thriving - until cattle are moved into the area.
Our public lands and the wildlife they support belong to us all.
Welfare ranchers have no right to remove and kill them for their personal profits.
We can put an end to this barbaric travesty by contacting our DC reps and demanding an immediate end to roundups, remove domestic livestock from our public lands, and that they support the S.A.F.E. Act in Congress.
Three majors roundups will start July 1.
Take action now.
Here you go, Nemo.
Everything you need to know about the current state of America's wild horses.
https://wildhorseeducation.org/
I've been following the wild horse issue since the 70s, and have seen all sides.
Everything I wrote can be verified.
Never before have the wild horses been under such attack as right now.
On our public lands, yes.
Public lands in the US belong to all of us; for environmentally conscious recreation, as well as areas that support biodiversity of thousands of species.
Using them for the private use of domestic livestock destroys environmentally sensitive areas, and adds to the problem of biodiversity loss.
We are in the middle of the 6th Great Extinction - and this is one of the reasons why.
🐦🔥nemo™🐦⬛ 🇺🇦🍉
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