LDS Member Argument: But in the past 10 years most of FARMS is moving away from Tapirs now back to literal
horses on the grounds that pre-Columbian Horses are now a reality as this link shows.
Critic's Rebuttal: The article states that archaeologists working in Carlsbad, CA have unearthed a skeleton of a horse
that may have lived and died 50 years before the Spanish are known to have brought horses to the area. They assert
that Radiocarbon dating indicates the remains are 340 years old, plus or minus 40 years.
It’s much more likely that the radiocarbon dating is simply off another 65 years and that the horse was brought by the
Spanish in 1769. OR, it’s quite possible that the Spanish brought horses before those missions were founded. Why
would anyone think that the no one could have brought a horse to California before 1769 since even Columbus
brought horses with him on his second voyage to the Americas in 1493?
What seems more likely – their radiocarbon dating is off a few years or that horses ran wild in the Americas during
BofM times and no other trace has ever been found of them? How could every other horse skeleton, every bridle,
every saddle, every depiction of horses and every memory of people using horses totally vanish and leave absolutely
no trace?
Article: Why did horses die out in North America?
Editor Comments: As children, we were all taught in American History classes about the profound impact that horses
had on the Indians once they were introduced to the New World by the Europeans. We have a hard time believing
that all the history books, scientists, Indian records, etc. are all wrong about something that was so important to the
Native Americans. If the ancient inhabitants of the Americas really had the horse as described in the BOM, we can't
conceive of how or why they would let this most useful of all animals disappear and of course leave absolutely no
trace of its existence.
Interesting note: Solomon Spalding, in his fictional piece Manuscript Story, mentions horses in connection with the
inhabitants of the New World. So perhaps it's no wonder that the author(s) of the BOM might make the same mistake.
Detailed Analysis of horses in the Book of Mormon
The best, most comprehensive discussion of the horse problem in the BOM can be found in this essay:
http://www.mormonmesoamerica.com/horses.htm (An archived backup of this webpage is here).
The author provides over-whelming evidence to show how the use of the word 'horse' in the BOM is a very serious
problem to the credibility of the BOM. All of the apologists' arguments are evaluated in detail. To summarize this
section, here are the “if….then” questions that need to be evaluated in context:
If the horse did exist in Mesoamerica during Book of Mormon times, then not a single bone or tooth from any
of these horses has ever been discovered, despite the fact that the remains of an abundance of other animals
have been discovered in Mesoamerica.
If horses existed in ancient Mesoamerica during the Book of Mormon time period, then despite the fact that
ancient Mesoamericans depicted many animals in art and ideology, they never depicted a horse or included
the horse in any of their mythology.
If the horse existed in Mesoamerica since Jaredite times, then it left no trace of the sort of social evolutionary
impact that we see in other cultures that possessed the horse.
If the Book of Mormon “horse” is really a tapir, then tapirs were domesticated only by one small group of
people, never to be replicated by anyone else, despite sharing characteristics that disqualify large mammals
from domestication.
It seems clear that each of these proposals is highly unlikely, and fails to fit within the context of not only what we
know about ancient Mesoamerica, but what we know about the history of other peoples in other parts of the world, as
well.
Book of Mormon defender Mike Ash recently repeated the old argument that even though we know that the Huns had
plenty of horses, "not a single usable horse bone has been found in the territory of the whole empire of the Huns.
Based on the fact that other--once thriving--animals have disappeared (often with very little trace), it is not
unreasonable to suggest that the same thing might have happened with the Nephite 'horse.'"