Horses, Horses, Where are the Horses?

[jskains]

What is the general theory of believers on the issue of horses in the BoM? If someone was honestly concerned on this issue, what is the best response from the believing community?

Thanks,

JMS

[Zakuska]

What is the general theory of believers on the issue of horses in the BoM? If someone was honestly concerned on this issue, what is the best response from the believing community?

Thanks,

JMS

Well since we know the archeologists tell us that the Elephants went extinct on the American continent around 400AD and since horse bones are found in conjuction with elephant remains. Is it such a logical leap?

[Scottie]

Well since we know the archeologists tell us that the Elephants went extinct on the American continent around 400AD and since horse bones are found in conjuction with elephant remains. Is it such a logical leap?

What??? CFR for both.

And, by the way, the absence of evidence goes MUCH deeper than simply not finding horse bones.

There is Z E R O artwork depicting horses, yet we find artwork for nearly every other kind of animal.

They had no way to deal with the conquistadors. Horses GREATLY skewed the battles.

There are no roads, which would have been used if horses were pulling chariots.

The overall view of the ancient civilizations would be dramatically different if horses had existed during BoM times.

[jskains]

What??? CFR for both.

And, by the way, the absence of evidence goes MUCH deeper than simply not finding horse bones.

There is Z E R O artwork depicting horses, yet we find artwork for nearly every other kind of animal.

They had no way to deal with the conquistadors. Horses GREATLY skewed the battles.

There are no roads, which would have been used if horses were pulling chariots.

The overall view of the ancient civilizations would be dramatically different if horses had existed during BoM times.

Ok, I feel dumb. What is CFR?

JMS

[Scottie]

Ok, I feel dumb. What is CFR?

JMS

Call For References

In other words, please provide a link to the article that shows any archeologists believe that elephants went extinct around 400AD and that they have found elephant bones dating after 10,000bc.

[Magyar]

No roads?

The MesoAmericans had some of the best roads on the planet when the Spanish arrived -- in fact, that helped to bring about their conquest. Big, wide roads right into the heart of their empire.

[Doug the Hutt]

Zak,

Yes, please, CFR. I've heard of horse bone hoaxes (seems one is mentioned by DCP or Tvednes or someone like that in one of those Youtube FAIRLDS links). I've also heard of horse bones in Florida swamps which couldn't be identified to any certainty by the discoverer since he recognized that the strata had shifted or something thus making old fossils poke up into a modern layer.

Magyar,

I've only heard about the roads in Central & South America from a co-worker. He said they were like 100 feet deep, then proceeded to tell me that there must have been some friggin' large animals plodding along on them, that those animals must have been the elephants, curelom & cumom of Book of Ether lore.

Perhaps someone can give us a tour with Google Earth ( maps.google.com ) showing us the marvelous roads? And will these roads contain those ancient horse bones? The fact is that a large road doesn't mean there were horses and chariots -- it means there was justification enough to build a road based on some need -- trade, convenience, safety, etc. I think it would be awesome to find horse fossils in conjunction with chariots *next to* the roads and found at a reasonable layer in the fossil record to be a bullseye. Otherwise it ends up looking like Texas target shooting. The problem I've always had with horse, elephant, sword fossils is that you can never find them all together within a community living during a certain New World Precolumbian Christian epoch. It's taking a pygamy mammoth from Engel Island north of Alaska and making the association that that proves Jaredites existed, proving that the Book of Mormon is true, thus proving TCOJCOLDS is true(!). It's taking disputed hoaxes (that is, the majority of scientists and archaeologists call them hoaxes and the fringe minority have a suspicious religious agenda which I'm certain they're sincere about) and insisting a conspiracy to suppress the truth against everyone being forced to conclude that Mormonism is true. That's been my experience with lay members.

[Doug the Hutt]

jskains,

Here's FAIR's response for horsies:

[Bob Crockett]

Clayton E. Ray, "Pre-columbian Horses from Yucatan," Journal of Mammology 58:2 (May 1957). Ray went on to be some sort of big shot at the Smithsonian.

Gavin Menzies argues in one of his year-numbered books that the Nez Perce horse stock pre-dates Columbus.

One of Barry Fells' acolytes, Gloria Farley, published a book "In Plain Sight," containing pictographs of horses, but really, how do you date pictographs?

I think the above is weak, but there you have it.

[Bob Crockett]

dupe

[Zakuska]

What??? CFR for both.

Sure thing Scottie...

Primary source for the Elephants is bolded...

The cited references above are (1) Palmer, D., ed. (1999). The Marshall Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Animals. London: Marshall Editions. pp.239

[Mola Ram Suda Ram]

Critics will accept nothing less than an elephant hide with the branding of "he went to Jareds" on it. and even then they would find a way to dispute it.

That is the funniest thing I have heard in a while.

[Zakuska]

That is the funniest thing I have heard in a while.

Whats funnier is critics who will acept things recorded in the Bible as truth with far less evidence than this.

What has been the cry for almost 150 years? "No perenial Rivers in all of Sadia Arabia" anywhere... One has been found... Whats the cry now? Oh but its only a little stream and there are no pictographs or graffiti in reformed Egyptian by Nephi stating..." Sam was here. 600 AD"

[Obiwan]

What??? CFR for both.

And, by the way, the absence of evidence goes MUCH deeper than simply not finding horse bones.

There is Z E R O artwork depicting horses, yet we find artwork for nearly every other kind of animal.

They had no way to deal with the conquistadors. Horses GREATLY skewed the battles.

There are no roads, which would have been used if horses were pulling chariots.

The overall view of the ancient civilizations would be dramatically different if horses had existed during BoM times.

Really?

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

[cinepro]

What is the general theory of believers on the issue of horses in the BoM? If someone was honestly concerned on this issue, what is the best response from the believing community?

Thanks,

JMS

As far as I can tell, people will either argue that there were horses here at that time, or that the word "horse" in the Book of Mormon is actually referring to some other animal.

[Zakuska]

As far as I can tell, people will either argue that there were horses here at that time, or that the word "horse" in the Book of Mormon is actually referring to some other animal.

Both acceptable and plausible answers IMHO.

[cinepro]

Both acceptable and plausible answers IMHO.

I agree that they are both equally acceptable and plausible. And obviously unfalsifiable.

[Zakuska]

Some more good reading... and source material. On horses and Elephant remains being found together.

The Clark Expeditions to Big Bone Lick commissioned by Thomas Jefferson:

http://www.ansp.org/...hp#otherfossils

http://www.ansp.org/...uus.php#return1

Need any more References Scottie?

[jskains]

However I reject the Mesoamerica argument. I accept the original theory of Northern America. Now there is evidence of horses from Asia (Jeredites?) and there is evidence that horses did evolve here, but there is a hole in the time period where the BoM is established.

Has anyone fully looked at Northern America and horses?

JMS

[handys003]

Well since we know the archeologists tell us that the Elephants went extinct on the American continent around 400AD and since horse bones are found in conjuction with elephant remains. Is it such a logical leap?

Anyone for Macaws and Elephants?

[Zakuska]

Anyone for Macaws and Elephants?

Please not another one of these threads... we all know art is interpreative.

Lets stick with the hard sciences. less wigle room.

[handys003]

Cave painings of man riding horse in Annubis cave in Colorado,

http://gloriafarley.com/chap4.htm

Other pics of horses:

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

[handys003]

Please not another one of these threads... we all know art is interpreative.

Lets stick with the hard sciences. less wigle room.

You know me just being an akamai okole

[Zakuska]

You know me just being an akamai okole

LOL. I like being an akamai okole too.

Or would that be a "a holo honua okole"?

Horses arrived five years afterward in 1803. 19th Century historian David Malo in his Moolelo Hawaii, lists among the

[StuddleyG]

Horses and elephants aren't the only animals accused of be in the Book of Mormon. There are pigs, sheep, goats, wild goats, and the ox. But for some reason, horses and elephants get the most attention. FARMS and FAIR come up with a lot of explanations. Here is an article in which a FAIR member tries to hit every anaochronism in the book one by one.

http://www.fairlds.org/FAIR_Conferences/2009_Science_and_the_Book_of_Mormon.html

This article leaves room for more questions, but that's the nature of apologetics. Richard Bushman refers to the work to defend the Book of Mormon as an uphill battle.