Horses BOM.pdf
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Ash's claim about Hun horse bones is unfortunately not accurate. Here and here are books that refer casually to Hun
horse bone evidence. Here is a report on a Hun horse find in Mongolia in 1990.
Ash's example is also problematic because bone evidence is not the only evidence we would expect to find in
Mesoamerica if horses had been domesticated there. There have been a large number of human cultural artifacts
relating to horses found in Hunnic lands. There are a great many saddles, harnesses, and whips in their burials and
funeral offerings, for example. In fact, wherever horses have been domesticated, they have always left their mark on
art and material culture. That is because horses gave a tremendous military and economic advantage to the
civilizations that mastered them. Yet in Mesoamerica, although we have a great deal of art, including vast numbers of
animal representations, horses are not depicted. We find no saddles, no bridles, and no chariot wheels.
Additionally, it should be noted that some historians have called into question how many horses the Huns actually
brought with them into Europe. The climate and food supplies in Eastern Europe were not as well-suited to large
numbers of horses as the Asian steppes. According to the Encyclopedia Brittanica,
[Attila's] Huns had become a sedentary nation and were no longer the horse nomads of the earlier days. The Great
Hungarian Plain did not offer as much room as the steppes of Asia for grazing horses, and the Huns were forced to
develop an infantry to supplement their now much smaller cavalry. As one leading authority has recently said, "When
the Huns first appeared on the steppe north of the Black Sea, they were nomads and most of them may have been
mounted warriors. In Europe, however, they could graze only a fraction of their former horse power, and their chiefs
soon fielded armies which resembled the sedentary forces of Rome."
So, if there is less evidence of Hun horses during this period in Europe than we would expect, it may well be because
the Huns of the region actually did not have as large a number of horses as commonly thought. Indeed, one source
suggests that Europe's Great Hungarian plain could have supported no more than 20,000.
And finally, it's worth adding that the period of Hun rule was quite short compared to the several-thousand-year lacuna
of horse evidence in the Americas from the generally-accepted Paleolithic extinction date to the time of alleged
domestication by Book of Mormon peoples. Even if the Hun period had been a true lacuna-- which it is not-- it
wouldn't really have been comparable to the situation in the Americas.