The skeletal remains of a ‘wild’ female horse buried in an ancient ancient lake in Utah and presumably dating from 16,000 years to the last ice age are actually no older than 340 years old.
The legs, excavated by gardeners in a backyard in Lehi, Utah in 2018 was initially dated to a period that ended about 11,700 years ago. But after analyzing the horse’s remains, scientists realized that the ungulate was actually a tame horse that had lived very recently.
The initial age of the horse remains indicates that this mare was wild; such horses lived in North America about 50 million to 10,000 years ago and disappeared around the same time that other large animals, including mammoths, short-sighted, horrible wolves, and giant sloths became extinct at the end of the last ice age. (It is likely that a combination of climate change and human interaction led to their downfall, research shows.) The new findings, however, suggest that this horse – who died when he was about 12 years old – was domestic and dates from post-Columbia times, after the Spaniards introduced the tame horse (Equus caballus) to the Americas that began in the 16th century.
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Many researchers living in the Americas have quickly integrated these European horses into their cultures and economies, the researchers wrote in the study. This mare, known as the Lehi horse, was no exception; it was probably raised, cared for and driven by native Utah people, possibly by a member of the Ute or Shoshone communities, said lead author William Taylor, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Colorado Boulder, tells Live Science.
“The Lehi horse shows us that there is an incredible archaeological report on the early relationship between indigenous peoples and horses – a report that tells us that has not been written in any European history,” Taylor said. He is also a curator of archeology at the Museum of Natural History of the University of Colorado, and holds a digital museum exhibition about horses in the ancient American West.
‘Epoch’ mixture
The confusion happened because indigenous people buried the horse in a pit surrounded by more sediments dating from 14,000 to 16,000 years ago.
However, new radiocarbon dating of the actual bones and clues from the Lehi horse’s anatomy and DNA now indicate that the mare lived more recently. But because the radiocarbon sample did not give an exact result, ‘we can only say that this horse died sometime after 1680’, probably before the European settlers settled permanently in the Salt Lake region during the middle of the 19th century. moved in, Taylor said.
In addition, Taylor and colleagues found fractures on the horse’s spine, indicating that someone had ridden the horse repeatedly – or with a gentle saddle push – without hitting the horse’s lower back. These fractures are a ‘kind of feature that is very rare in a wild animal,’ Taylor said. ‘As we took a closer look, we found other clues, including severe arthritis – and ultimately genetic data helped us confirm this idea’ that the horse was the tame horse. Equus caballus, not an ice age.
Despite the mare’s injuries, people cared for the horse, possibly because they wanted to breed her with local stallions, the researchers said in the study, which was published in the journal on February 4. American Antiquity.
In addition, an analysis of the isotopes (a variation of an element) in the horse’s tooth enamel revealed that it was drinking water and eating vegetation in the Wasatch Front region of Utah, suggesting that the horse was reared and be looked after locally … close to where it was found, ‘the researchers wrote in the study.
Originally published on Live Science.