pillbox_girl: Do you also wonder how modern North Americans became master car builders so quickly after the automobile's introduction to America?No, I don't, considering that the original autos were just motorized carriages, the population was literate (and had been for a long while), and surrounded by products of the industrial age. But perhaps that was just a joke.
pillbox_girl: For a resource as revolutionary useful as the horse, two and a half centuries is more than enough time for a people to learn how to fully exploit it and then forget there was ever a time when they didn't have it. Especially when you consider that they preserved their history primarily orally, and the Spaniard's other gift to North America, smallpox, was incredibly effective at wiping out the older generations and their memories just as they were coming into contact with the horse for the first time.250 years is long enough to forget the time before the horse, and just for good measure, the Spanish also introduced smallpox and wiped out the oral link to the past. IOW, there's no evidence that the tribes had the horse (apart from the burial of a horse skull in a 9th century mound) prior to 1540, and there's no evidence that the horse was introduced in 1540.
jimtorr: On the other hand, every tribe on the great plains at that time, I think, had recent memories of acquiring horses and moving onto the plains.So, the tribes didn't have any memory of a time before the horse, according to PBG, or every tribe did have memories of the recent acquisition, according to Jim.
I specifically recall an account of one of the Souix tribal chiefs, after losing the wars, talking to government folks in Washington.
He said that he remembered as a young boy how his grandfather (a flexible term, that, meaning nearly anyone in his family older than his father and uncless) talked about personally riding out onto the plains from the East and taking the territory of tribes that did not have horses.
Since he was now an old chief, and his grandfather had personally seen the move, It couldnpt have happened long before Lewis & Clark made their trek.
The Proto-Sioux (to coin a term) could not have had large numbers of horses long before they crossed the big muddy rivers. East of the river was mostly forest then, and would not support large horse herds.
That's not to say that the tribes did not have ponies for millenia, but just never thought to ride them until they saw the Spanish doing so. After all, they did have the wheel. They just thought of it as a childrens toy.
I will repeat: You base your entire arguement on a single horse skull that has itself never been objectively dated. The only "proof" as to the legitmacy of the horse skull is the assurance of its legitimacy by a Mr. W.C. McKern. That is not sufficient for the skull to be taken as credible evidence of pre-columbian horses in North America. I find it highly suspicious that the artifacts associated with the horse skull have all been radio carbon dated, but that the skull itself was omitted from these tests; especially considering the purpose of the radio carbon dating was to establish the age of the horse skull itself.
If this horse skull is ever radio carbon tested or other wise dated by a legitmate objective means and shown to be pre-columbian, then it is a significant and important find indeed. Until then, however, is is not evidence of anything more than Mr. W.C. McKern produced a horse skull that may or may not be pre-columbian in origin, and probably isn't.
and there's no evidence that the horse was introduced in 1540.
Oh please. We have written accounts from the second voyage of Columbus that he released horses into the Virgin Islands in 1493. We have more records of a second release of horses on the mainland in 1519, and further reports from Coronado's expedition. Are you saying these written accounts are falsehoods? Why would the Spaniards make such a thing up?
There are probably other recorded instances of horses being released into North America by the Spaniards that I am unaware of, and almost definitely there were unrecorded releases. It is assumed that Coronado's horses were the genesis of the Native American's stocks, but it is possible they originated fron one of the many other Spanish releases. But that does not mean there was a population of horses in North America that preceded the Spanish re-introduction.
If, as you would have us believe, the horse was present in North America before Columbus, why does legitimate proven fossil evidence of it only appear after Columbus? And why does that evidence appear so suddenly and pervasively in the fossil record and exclusively in association with human artifacts? Coincidence?