Carving Of Precolumbian Horse At Chich

[Rommelator]

Please remember that there are issues of translation that make such a firm declaration that "a horse is a horse" more questionable (and the reason that you will find different voices among members of the LDS church).

An excellent observation. Also remember the possibility of Nehpite lone-shifting or giving a familiar name (horse) to an unknown animal (deer, tapir, etc.).

There is more than just one possibility.

[BCSpace]

So, my question is, where did all the horses go for 1500 years?

The horses went apostate and turned into tapirs.

And, given the relatively recent existence of horses in the Americas per the BOM, why no fossil record?

Who says there isn't one yet to be found?

[Zakuska]

I picked up a discard from our ward library, Archaeology and the Book of Mormon, by Milton R. Hunter, Deseret Book Company, 1956.

Right there on page 6 is a photo of a carving on the wall of the Temple of the Plaques at Chich

[BCSpace]

"Man missing head"? That makes the "horse" even smaller. More like a dog.

[ERMD]

Looks more like a salamander to me.

[Riada]

You don't need a platoon of "experts" to tell you that--any kindergartener call see that it's a horse.

Kindergartener? There is an idea! To substantiate this interpretation, you can interview a bunch of five year olds and cite them in FARMS' next publication. Brilliant!

[Ron Beron]

I think that it shows proof positive that survivors of Troy, bringing tales of the Trojan Horse, arrived in the Americas. Yea, that's the ticket!

On a more serious side the picture showing a horse pulling a cart supposedly discovered as a stone carving has been discredited as a forgery. Under a electron microscope it was shown the carving were modern.

My doubts about the others are whether they were carved post Columbus or pre Columbus. Any info on their ages?

I would imagine that under all this manure someone will find a pony.

[smac97]

I honestly can't tell what it is. The pictures are not good enough for me to tell the details of the man standing next to it and the figure is in the background. From experience working with Mesoamerican art, I am reluctant to declare anything without much better information.

Of course, it could be a tapir <grin>.

Here are two higher-resolution pictures (though the lighting is not that good):

http://travel.webshots.com/photo/1112747974049978437DmGdaD

http://travel.webshots.com/photo/1112748003049978437OvvmTT

Click on the magnifying glass below each pic and you'll get an even bigger and higher-res version (I tried to link directly to those, but the links fail for some reason).

-Smac

[Brant Gardner]

The lighting on those is pretty bad, but among all of the photographs, here is what can be said:

1) There is a figure of a person, a man based on what I see of the clothing, standing in front of an animal.

2) The animal is not taller than the man's waist.

3) Mesoamerican art is not necessarily accurately depicting scale or perspective, but relative size is usually an indication. This suggests that the animal is no more than waist high. On the average Mesoamerican native, less that three feet to the waist (assuming a 5 foot average).

4) The legs are drawn in a fashion that is not realistic for any animal. They curve inward with no indication of the knee. That precludes any clear use of the legs as a determination of the type of animal and certainly underscores that it is less that accurately depicted.

4) The head is nondescript. If this were a better indication of a horse we would expect a longer head. Since it isn't realistic, it isn't certain, but there is nothing in the head that suggests anything particularly horselike.

5) The tail does not appear to hair, but rather an bony tail.

It really seems like it is a dog more than a horse. If you saw it first and someone labeled it dog, I doubt we would be calling it a horse.

Having said that, as I remember, some of the horse bones found in situ came from Chichen. Still, I vote for dog on this stone.

[Daniel Peterson]

Kindergartener? There is an idea! To substantiate this interpretation, you can interview a bunch of five year olds and cite them in FARMS' next publication. Brilliant!

I have it on very reliable authority that such substantiation would be pretty much par for the course for the laughable blithering idiots at FARMS . . .

[juliann]

There have been anomalous horse bones in different locations that weren't properly examined, because "everyone knew" that they shouldn't be there.

That is how some of the Utah rock paintings/pictographs are dated. If there is a horse they automatically give it a later date...or say that it was a later addition.

I still find it astonishing that so many are willing to take a stand that everything is decided simply because it has relevance to Mormonism. I wouldn't back myself into that kind of corner no matter what was at stake. I am just sure things will be discovered that won't be helpful to Mormonism as I am that there will be things found that are helpful. The point is that I am not going to deny that there will be new discoveries or reinterpretations of existing ones.

[LifeOnaPlate]

I'll take BG's opinion over Hunter's.

[All-Seeing Eye]

OK, I must confess that the images concerning Stelae B, Copan, which purport to be elephants, actually do look like elephants, on this site:

http://www.the-book-of-mormon.com/photo-proofs.html

What is the rebuttal to this? They really don't look like parrots to me.

[jonzlaw]

I am curious as to why you think that somehow non-LDS archaeologists are superior to LDS archaeologists. Why does their opinion hold more weight? Should we not analyze arguments based on evidence and logic, regardless of who is presenting the facts?

All together now: "BIAS"

Pre-historic horse once roamed the Americas long before Columbus, or Lehi, for that matter, ever arrived.

Possibly the same place that the dinosaurs all went: Extinct.

You are correct, and this is the problem. The horse was in fact extinct in the Americas for some 10,000 years pre-Columbus.

There are some hints here or there, but nothing conclusive.

Hints? What hints? I haven't seen any hints!

I know that anti-Mormons hate to hear this and simply dismiss it as a Mormon escape, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Why am I an "anti" because you can't deal with the fact that there weren't any horses in the Americas at the time Smith says there were in the BOM?

I would be interested to find out what other super non-biased, impartial, objective and totally scientific non-LDS experts say on this. Surely they won't let any bias get in their way like those hacks at BYU. And, after all, only non-LDS scholars' words counts, right?

A little defensive don't you think? You do illustrate the point though. Bias is the obvious problem with the LDS archeologist/scholar.

[Chris Smith]

Hey everyone,

Beastie offers the following from a review on Amazon:

Reality check: After much research, and not finding any reference to a carving of a horse at Chichen Itza, I discovered that the carving was the damaged portion of a backwards figure "S" jaguar serpent (a feather is the horse's head).

A detailed rubbing of the stone can be seen in the "Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel," by Ralph Roys (University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma, 1967), plate 1.

Beastie was also kind enough to hunt up the Roys rubbing mentioned in the review. (To read the Roys book in PDF format, click here. The image below is plate 1c.)

The frame in question is top row, third from the left. As you can see, it's not a horse. Best,

-Chris

[jonzlaw]

The "LDS church" is a collection of individuals, and while some believe that there were horses, others are either not sure or are still open to the changing nature of the evidence. The blanket statement is simply inapplicable.

Point taken.

Perhaps. The evidence is really kind of thin. There certainly weren't very many, if any.

No. It is a well established fact that there were no horses. The evidence is not thin. There is no archeological evidence of horses, and, remember, the horse was completely unknown to the American Indian pre-Columbus.

Please remember that there are issues of translation that make such a firm declaration that "a horse is a horse" more questionable (and the reason that you will find different voices among members of the LDS church).

This I have not heard before. So what you're saying is that Smith perhaps mistranslated the word "horse?"

I am on firmer ground with remains of horse bones found in situ in Precolumbian Mesoamerican sites. They have been tested and declared both authentic and pre-contact. I heard about the results of the study a year ago, to my knowledge is hasn't been published. There have been anomalous horse bones in different locations that weren't properly examined, because "everyone knew" that they shouldn't be there.

Can you direct me to the firmer ground please? I'm sure there are several "unpublished" studies on this subject, but the problem is that there are still more "published" ones.

Caution is a better position.

Well said, and to be heeded by us all.

[jonzlaw]

The horses went apostate and turned into tapirs.

Funny!

Who says there isn't one yet to be found?

Virtually every believing Mormon says theres one yet to be found.

[Bernard Gui]

The LDS church believes - contrary to virtually all non-LDS archeologists - that the horse did in fact exist in the Americas pre-Columbus. Whether this is true or not, virtually all LDS and non-LDS would agree that when the Spaniards arrived in America in the 1500s, there were in fact no horses here. Also, as noted in 3 Ne. 3:22, 3 Ne. 4:4, and 3 Ne. 6:1, the BOM places horses in the Americas as late as AD 17, AD 19, and AD 26, respectively.

So, my question is, where did all the horses go for 1500 years?

In your opinion, what was the size of the horse population as described in the Book of Mormon?

Bernard

[Chris Smith]

OK, I must confess that the images concerning Stelae B, Copan, which purport to be elephants, actually do look like elephants, on this site:

http://www.the-book-of-mormon.com/photo-proofs.html

What is the rebuttal to this? They really don't look like parrots to me.

According to this book, they are stylized Macaws.

[smac97]

OK, I must confess that the images concerning Stelae B, Copan, which purport to be elephants, actually do look like elephants, on this site:

http://www.the-book-of-mormon.com/photo-proofs.html

What is the rebuttal to this? They really don't look like parrots to me.

I thought this was interesting:

A ritual vessel from the Classic Maya showing what appears to be an elephant deity depicting reasonably faithfully, probably from a mariner's description from Buddhist or Hindu India, this special deity as Ganesa - the god of protection and luck in ventures. [...] Yalloch, Guatemala, Late Classic, 600-900 A.D.

Some additional discussion is available here.

Here's a purported carving of an elephant at Copan.

-Smac

[jonzlaw]

In your opinion, what was the size of the horse population as described in the Book of Mormon?

Bernard

Don't honestly know Bernard. 2? 20? 200? 2000? 2 million? How many horses are in a "horde" or a "herd?" 3 Nephi 4:5 and 6:1 seem to indicate that they were quite plentiful.

[Daniel Peterson]

No. It is a well established fact that there were no horses. The evidence is not thin. There is no archeological evidence of horses, and, remember, the horse was completely unknown to the American Indian pre-Columbus.

A nice statement of the overwhelming consensus, but a bit overconfident.

There is some much argued evidence for pre-Conquest but historical horses, and, it seems, there is some such evidence yet to be published.

Incidentally, the late anthropologist Ashley Montague (for whom generally, see the link below) argued many decades ago in a little-known article that the Plains Indians must have known horses before the arrival of the Spaniards. (It's been years since I read the article, and you'll be able to find it as easily as I can.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashley_Montagu

So what you're saying is that Smith perhaps mistranslated the word "horse?"

The typical argument along this line is not that Joseph Smith mistranslated the Nephite word as horse but, rather, that the Nephites themselves applied their equivalent of our word horse to an animal that we today would not classify, biologically speaking, as a horse. Baird's tapir has been suggested as a possible candidate for the animal in question. The suggestion is much mocked by linguistic and anthropological na

[Bernard Gui]

Don't honestly know Bernard. 2? 20? 200? 2000? 2 million? How many horses are in a "horde" or a "herd?" 3 Nephi 4:5 and 6:1 seem to indicate that they were quite plentiful.

Well, you might want to look at the actual references before you use words like herd, horde, and plentiful.

Bernard

[jonzlaw]

Well, you need to look at the actual references before you use a words like herd, horde, and plentiful.

Bernard

Like these?

"The Nephites being in one body, and having so great a number, and having

reserved for themselves provisions, and HORSES and cattle, and flocks of every

kind, that they might subsist for the space of SEVEN YEARS....." (3 Nephi

4:5,

"the people of the Nephites did all return to their own lands in the twenty

and sixth year, every man, with his family, his flocks and his herds, his HORSES

and his cattle....."

"Plentiful" was my word btw.

[jonzlaw]

The typical argument along this line is not that Joseph Smith mistranslated the Nephite word as horse but, rather, that the Nephites themselves applied their equivalent of our word horse to an animal that we today would not classify, biologically speaking, as a horse. Baird's tapir has been suggested as a possible candidate for the animal in question. The suggestion is much mocked by linguistic and anthropological na