Why Do We Look For Bones?

[ControlFreak]

I've frequently thought about this and have searched for discussion to no avail, but why are we looking for bones of cows, pigs, sheep, goats, horses and elephants. It seems unimaginable that the most useful species of animals ever known to the human race would all become extinct (in the Americas) over the course of 1000 or so years. In other words, is it truly reasonable that none of these animals were living on the american continents when the Spanish arrived?

Has this been addressed? Were there any large scale extinctions in this time period?

Edit: clarifying my question that in looking for bones we seem to ignore the huge question of how they all would have gone extinct?

Edited February 17, 2013 by ControlFreak

[Duncan]

I guess another question is where do you look and who is going to pay for you looking?

[Saints Alive]

If they were on the eastern half of North America there would be no bones left after 100 years or so. In the moist forests of that area bones don't last long, either creatures run off with them and eat them or the climate deteriorates them. It's not like the dry western half of the country where bone might be preserved if conditions are right.

[ControlFreak]

If they were on the eastern half of North America there would be no bones left after 100 years or so. In the moist forests of that area bones don't last long, either creatures run off with them and eat them or the climate deteriorates them. It's not like the dry western half of the country where bone might be preserved if conditions are right.

Apparently, I didn't write that clearly enough. I'm not worried about bones. I'm wondering how the animals became extinct. That seems like a major stretch that all of the most valuable animal species on the planet died out. How would they have died and why would they ALL have died without a mass extinction event?

[livy111us]

They were hunted for food. The general consensus is that they became extinct around 10,000 BC partly due to the fact that they tasted good But as we are beginning to learn from such men as Wade Miller and John Sorenson, there were at least pockets of horses that survived well into and even past Book of Mormon times. A few horse bones that have been found in archaeological digs that seem out of place if they were a recent introduction, were carbon dated by Wade Miller and others and actually found that they date to BOM times.

Dr. Wade Miller said this in his 2009 FAIR conference:

"Horses weren’t here in America after about 10,000 years ago according to Smithsonian archaeologists. As you know horses (and asses) are mentioned as being present among both the Jaredites and Nephites. It might surprise most of you that the history of the horse is mainly here in America. The very first horses come from North America, and their record goes back to about 58 million years ago. Horses were small, forest dwelling animals at the time. It wasn’t until much later that horses reached the Old World, being roughly the size of modern forms then. Columbus only reintroduced the horse to America. I’ve actually done a lot of work with fossil horses from many areas and from different periods of time. A lot of my work has been done on them in Mesoamerica, primarily in Mexico. While the vast majority of dates for these various kinds of horses are well before man was known in the New World, a few of the dates are very surprisingly young. I have Carbon-14 dates on horses that are as recent as 800 years. Other dates are only 1200 years to 1400 years ago. More dates in this range are needed to be able to convince others that horses were indeed here before 1493, when they were reintroduced. Other paleontologists have produced dates on fossil horses that show they lived here long after the 10,000 years before stated. This slide is of a partial horse skeleton that was put together with my colleagues in Mexico. An earlier slide showed the location where it was collected. It was that picture that I said to remember from Durango, Mexico, where a lot of fossils were found within one small area."

http://www.fairlds.org/fair-conferences/2009-fair-conference/2009-science-and-the-book-of-mormon

John Sorenson will also have more information on this in the upcoming Mormons Codex

http://bookstore.fairlds.org/product.php?id_product=462

[ControlFreak]

OK, so there are some bones of horses that the Smithsonian doesn't agree with. That could very well be true. But my real question, that I'm very curious about, is how a civilization that had domestic animals would somehow let them all go extinct. All of them. Domestic animals are major game changers in the development of civilization. How could they possibly all have died? We shouldn't expect to see bones. We should have found the living animals themselves! What explanation do we have for this?

[Rivers]

I'm partial to the theory that most of the BOM anochronisms are translation quirks. That seems more plausible than entire species of animals going extinct and not leaving any hard evidence of their existence.

[livy111us]

I never said that the Smithsonian doesn't agree with these findings. I am fairly certain that they are currently unaware of them and when they do learn of them, I highly doubt that they will disagree with solid evidence from numerous separate specimens from different archaeological sites.

How did they let them go extinct? There is some evidence that they never were extinct. There has been some discussion about this on this board about mustang DNA, large populations of horses found in isolated areas on the west coast, etc... Can't say I payed much attention to those arguments so it wouldn't help if I tried to explain it. But it is something you can look into if you are interested.

You ask how they could go extinct? Well, how does any animal go extinct? Being hunted and famine usually play a part in it. But if there was a war which annihilated an entire civilization that lasted for decades and the victors then turned on themselves, keeping the horses fed and watered may be a little lower on the list. One tactic in warfare is to destroy the enemies source of food and transportation. The Lamanites most certainly performed this age old tactic to weaken the Nephites. But that is only if horses actually went extinct.

[poulsenll]

Modern cases are that of the passenger pigeon and the dodo bird, both hunted to extinction for food. Not because the people were starving but because they were tasty.

Larry P

[Ron Beron]

Apparently, I didn't write that clearly enough. I'm not worried about bones. I'm wondering how the animals became extinct. That seems like a major stretch that all of the most valuable animal species on the planet died out. How would they have died and why would they ALL have died without a mass extinction event?

One theory is that they were all eaten. Another is that they were subject to new diseases brought by the influx of Asian peoples.

[Ron Beron]

They were hunted for food. The general consensus is that they became extinct around 10,000 BC partly due to the fact that they tasted good But as we are beginning to learn from such men as Wade Miller and John Sorenson, there were at least pockets of horses that survived well into and even past Book of Mormon times. A few horse bones that have been found in archaeological digs that seem out of place if they were a recent introduction, were carbon dated by Wade Miller and others and actually found that they date to BOM times.

Dr. Wade Miller said this in his 2009 FAIR conference:

"Horses weren’t here in America after about 10,000 years ago according to Smithsonian archaeologists. As you know horses (and asses) are mentioned as being present among both the Jaredites and Nephites. It might surprise most of you that the history of the horse is mainly here in America. The very first horses come from North America, and their record goes back to about 58 million years ago. Horses were small, forest dwelling animals at the time. It wasn’t until much later that horses reached the Old World, being roughly the size of modern forms then. Columbus only reintroduced the horse to America. I’ve actually done a lot of work with fossil horses from many areas and from different periods of time. A lot of my work has been done on them in Mesoamerica, primarily in Mexico. While the vast majority of dates for these various kinds of horses are well before man was known in the New World, a few of the dates are very surprisingly young. I have Carbon-14 dates on horses that are as recent as 800 years. Other dates are only 1200 years to 1400 years ago. More dates in this range are needed to be able to convince others that horses were indeed here before 1493, when they were reintroduced. Other paleontologists have produced dates on fossil horses that show they lived here long after the 10,000 years before stated. This slide is of a partial horse skeleton that was put together with my colleagues in Mexico. An earlier slide showed the location where it was collected. It was that picture that I said to remember from Durango, Mexico, where a lot of fossils were found within one small area."

http://www.fairlds.o...-book-of-mormon

John Sorenson will also have more information on this in the upcoming Mormons Codex

http://bookstore.fai...?id_product=462

As an adjunct to this I participated in a survey of a site that was part of an alluvial fan that included horse bones. Without dating followup I am hard pressed to give you dates, but they were pre-Columbian.

[mfbukowski]

Apparently, I didn't write that clearly enough. I'm not worried about bones. I'm wondering how the animals became extinct. That seems like a major stretch that all of the most valuable animal species on the planet died out. How would they have died and why would they ALL have died without a mass extinction event?

Huh? I am totally confused. Seems to me like there are still plenty of cows and pigs etc left on the planet. Did I miss something?

[ControlFreak]

Huh? I am totally confused. Seems to me like there are still plenty of cows and pigs etc left on the planet. Did I miss something?

Apparently. That or you are being funny. They all became extinct in the Americas. Come up with a term for local extinction if there isn't one already, but that's what I'm referring to. If that's what you disagree with, state that you think those animals were here when the conquistadors arrived.

History has shown that domesticable animals are incredibly valuable, unlike the dodo or other animals hunted to extinction. Not only that, these animals were already domesticated. So is the conclusion just that the Lamanites were so ignorant that they slaughtered them all? Literally, all of the most important species ever to live on the planet? That's possible, I'm just wondering if that's the only thing we have any evidence to believe.

Edited February 17, 2013 by ControlFreak

[bcuzbcuz]

I've frequently thought about this and have searched for discussion to no avail, but why are we looking for bones of cows, pigs, sheep, goats, horses and elephants. It seems unimaginable that the most useful species of animals ever known to the human race would all become extinct (in the Americas) over the course of 1000 or so years. In other words, is it truly reasonable that none of these animals were living on the american continents when the Spanish arrived?

Has this been addressed? Were there any large scale extinctions in this time period?

Edit: clarifying my question that in looking for bones we seem to ignore the huge question of how they all would have gone extinct?

There have been no mass extinctions in the Americans during the last 10,000 years. The La Brea tar pits have many examples of the animals you mention (no pigs or cows) but they pre-date that period.

Among the finds are remains of a saber-toothed cat, six dire wolves, bison, horses, a giant ground sloth, turtles,snails, clams, millipedes, fish, gophers, and an American lion.^[10][11] Also discovered is a near-intact mammoth skeleton, nicknamed Zed; the only pieces missing are a rear leg, a vertebra and the top of his skull, which was sheared off by construction equipment in preparation to build the parking structure. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Brea_Tar_Pits

Only one human has ever been found, a partial skeleton of the La Brea Woman^[14] dated to approximately 10,000 calendar years (~9,000 radiocarbon years) BP,^[15] who was 17 to 25 years old at death,^[16] and found associated with remains of a domestic dog,

Radiometric dating of preserved wood and bones has given an age of 38,000 years for the oldest known material from the La Brea seeps. The pits still ensnare organisms today, so most of the pits are fenced to keep humans and other animals from joining the fossil record.

For some years, tar-covered bones were found on the Rancho La Brea property, but were not initially recognized as fossils, because the ranch itself had lost various animals, including horses, cattle, dogs, and even camels, whose bones closely resemble several of the fossil species.

http://www.tarpits.org/ is a great site.

Other sites have been found where spearheads and sharp edged blades have both killed and scraped the bones of mammoths. Whether man was responsible for the extinction of mammoths in the Americas is the stuff that keeps archaeologists awake at night. Is man capable of causing extinction? Absolutely. Given enough time and opportunity mankind still wipes out species with impunity. Oops!

But until some evidence come forwards that can be substantiated there is no evidence of horses, cows, domestic sheep or pigs in the Americas at the arrival of the Europeans, neither Erik the Red nor Columbus.

[edit]

[ERayR]

So much area. So much has happened. So few people searching. When a major find is made it is more often than not accidental. To me it takes some hubris to declare that these animals were not here because there is no fossil record. It would be much wiser to simply note that it is possible but the fossil record doesn't yet show it.

[thesometimesaint]

http://s747.beta.photobucket.com/user/McCoyBrad/media/Costa%20Rica/P1020125.jpg.html?fromLegacy=true

[guerreiro9]

Apparently. That or you are being funny. They all became extinct in the Americas. Come up with a term for local extinction if there isn't one already, but that's what I'm referring to. If that's what you disagree with, state that you think those animals were here when the conquistadors arrived.

History has shown that domesticable animals are incredibly valuable, unlike the dodo or other animals hunted to extinction. Not only that, these animals were already domesticated. So is the conclusion just that the Lamanites were so ignorant that they slaughtered them all? Literally, all of the most important species ever to live on the planet? That's possible, I'm just wondering if that's the only thing we have any evidence to believe.

I have heard this line of thinking before, to paraphrase "if horses were in the Americas before Columbus they would have had such a profound effect on the civilizations that their presence would be easily distinguishable and they never would have been allowed to become extinct."

The irony in this line of thinking is that many of those who make this statement also believe that horses became extinct in the Americas approximately 10,000 years ago while co-inhabiting the land with humans. But should not this same statement apply to the earlier believed extinction? If horses have such a profound impact on all cultures they come in contact with why did they not have any distinguishable influence on the early inhabitants of the Americas? Why would these cultures have allowed the horse to become extinct? We have definitive proof that the early cultures interacted with horses by way of horse DNA being found on spearheads (they were eating them).

There is also no known geological reason why the Americas could not have continued to support horses after the Pleistocene epoch. They flourished, and then they disappeared, and when re-introduced they flourished again with no known reason for their disappearance. In fact the main reason we even believe they disappeared is because the European settlers did not initially see any when they arrived in the Americas. When they did later see them amongst the Native Americans they just assumed that the Native Americans had stolen them or found them after they had run off. If the first Europeans had assumed that horses had been here all along we probably would not be having this conversation, because there is very little evidence to overturn this assumption, some, but not definitive. On the other hand the assumption was made that horses were not in the Americas and the evidence has not been sufficient to overturn this assumption, although that is changing each year. Long standing beliefs do not die easily.

So I will ask you the question. How is it possible that horses became extinct 10,000 years ago while interacting with humans and leaving no distinguishable mark on their societies?

-guerreiro9

ps. Is that a Matlab plot in your Avatar picture? I tried to enlarge it so I could see the legend to see what you are controlling, but I couldn't read it.

[bcuzbcuz]

http://s747.beta.pho...fromLegacy=true

No, my reference was to tarpits, not tapirs. lol

[thesometimesaint]

But until some evidence come forwards that can be substantiated there is no evidence of horses, cows, domestic sheep or pigs in the Americas at the arrival of the Europeans, neither Erik the Red nor Columbus.".

[edit]"

Not tapirs. Picary, type of wild pig.

[bcuzbcuz]

So much area. So much has happened. So few people searching. When a major find is made it is more often than not accidental. To me it takes some hubris to declare that these animals were not here because there is no fossil record. It would be much wiser to simply note that it is possible but the fossil record doesn't yet show it.

A good number of archaeological and paleontological finds turn up in unexpected places but archaeologists and paleontologists need to put in a great number of hours of hard work and study to know what it is that has been discovered. That part has nothing to do with luck.

Cultures that have had horses, such as the steppes people of Eurasia have bountiful pictures and sculptures of horses. The Norse buried their horses with their chieftains. In the Urals mountains, horses were buried with their chariots. Pictures can be found from Egypt to China and Russia.

The Botai culture was a culture of foragers who seem to have adopted horseback riding in order to hunt the abundant wild horses of northern Kazakhstan between 3500–3000 BCE.^[29][30] Botai sites had no cattle or sheep bones; the only domesticated animals, in addition to horses, were dogs. Botai settlements in this period contained between 50–150 pit houses. Garbage deposits contained tens to hundreds of thousands of discarded animal bones, 65% to 99% of which had come from horses. Also, there has been evidence found of horse milking at these sites, with horse milk fats soaked into pottery shards dating to 3500 BCE. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestication_of_the_horse

No bones of any horse have been found in the Americas that pre-date Columbus, except the horses that disappeared some 10,000 years earlier. The peoples of North, Central and South America have no artifacts that depict horses. The DNA of modern horses in the Americas all go back to Euroasian stock.

So, until someone finds some or any evidence of pre-Columbian horses in the Americas, I'm not saying the final chapter is written but I'll eat ten kilos of horse meat if I'm wrong. (Don't worry, I live in Europe, we've been unwittingly fed horse meat for years)

[bcuzbcuz]

But until some evidence come forwards that can be substantiated there is no evidence of horses, cows, domestic sheep or pigs in the Americas at the arrival of the Europeans, neither Erik the Red nor Columbus.".

[edit]"

Not tapirs. Picary, type of wild pig.

I have a work buddy whose lawn was torn up this past autumn by wild boars that have freely crossed with feral pigs. They have a hairy ridge down their back, are usually blotched coloring and are extremely aggressive. (They taste good though.)

[thesometimesaint]

In some parts of the country wild pig hunting is common. Can't say that I've ever tried any, but I do hear it is good tasting. The only type of hunting I do anymore is the type I do at the grocery store.

[telnetd]

But until some evidence come forwards that can be substantiated there is no evidence of horses, cows, domestic sheep or pigs in the Americas at the arrival of the Europeans, neither Erik the Red nor Columbus.".

[edit]"

Not tapirs. Picary, type of wild pig.

In place of bones, they should be looking for evidences of the metallurgical

industries that were used in the Book of Mormon to produce metal swords,

breastplates, coinage, and other machinery (2 Nephi 5:15; Jarom 1:8; and

Mosiah 11:3,8]. Who knows - they may even find the chariots that were used

for war and/or travel. Apparently the benefit of wheels was lost on the Native

American Indians, who the church taught were the principal descendants of

the Lamanites until recently.

Gail

[Bart Burk]

I've frequently thought about this and have searched for discussion to no avail, but why are we looking for bones of cows, pigs, sheep, goats, horses and elephants. It seems unimaginable that the most useful species of animals ever known to the human race would all become extinct (in the Americas) over the course of 1000 or so years. In other words, is it truly reasonable that none of these animals were living on the american continents when the Spanish arrived?

Has this been addressed? Were there any large scale extinctions in this time period?

Edit: clarifying my question that in looking for bones we seem to ignore the huge question of how they all would have gone extinct?

I agree with you. I think it is at least possible there were horses in the Americas prior to the time of Columbus.

[ControlFreak]

I have heard this line of thinking before, to paraphrase "if horses were in the Americas before Columbus they would have had such a profound effect on the civilizations that their presence would be easily distinguishable and they never would have been allowed to become extinct."

Yes! That's my point.

The irony in this line of thinking is that many of those who make this statement also believe that horses became extinct in the Americas approximately 10,000 years ago while co-inhabiting the land with humans. But should not this same statement apply to the earlier believed extinction? If horses have such a profound impact on all cultures they come in contact with why did they not have any distinguishable influence on the early inhabitants of the Americas? Why would these cultures have allowed the horse to become extinct? We have definitive proof that the early cultures interacted with horses by way of horse DNA being found on spearheads (they were eating them).

There is also no known geological reason why the Americas could not have continued to support horses after the Pleistocene epoch. They flourished, and then they disappeared, and when re-introduced they flourished again with no known reason for their disappearance. In fact the main reason we even believe they disappeared is because the European settlers did not initially see any when they arrived in the Americas. When they did later see them amongst the Native Americans they just assumed that the Native Americans had stolen them or found them after they had run off. If the first Europeans had assumed that horses had been here all along we probably would not be having this conversation, because there is very little evidence to overturn this assumption, some, but not definitive. On the other hand the assumption was made that horses were not in the Americas and the evidence has not been sufficient to overturn this assumption, although that is changing each year. Long standing beliefs do not die easily.

So I will ask you the question. How is it possible that horses became extinct 10,000 years ago while interacting with humans and leaving no distinguishable mark on their societies?

That's a good point. I don't dispute that it is a possibility that these animals were hunted out of existence, just seems unlikely. I have a few things to consider.

1: 10000 years ago nobody used domesticated animals in the Americas. (Except maybe dogs? Can't remember)

2: Nephites and lamanites knew how to use domesticated animals.

3: let's not get fixated on horses. Goats, sheep, cows and pigs are also exceptionally important domestic species. As soon as someone domesticates a wild picary, I guess we can check that off the list. Although, it may be arguable that pigs weren't domesticated in bom times? Would be an odd reference, but not impossible.

-guerreiro9

ps. Is that a Matlab plot in your Avatar picture? I tried to enlarge it so I could see the legend to see what you are controlling, but I couldn't read it.

I think so. It's a comparison of PID tuning algorithms that I just snagged off the internet to illustrate that I'm a process control engineer.