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For anyone interested, the picture Figure 1 [0] - as one would except - is quite messy but yeah, Equus (most recent common ancestor) node 1 and node 2 (3.9 - 7.
by dav_Oz 4y ago
For anyone interested, the picture Figure 1 [0] - as one would except - is quite messy but yeah, Equus (most recent common ancestor) node 1 and node 2 (3.9 - 7.8 mya (~5.6 mya)) and the divergence (node 3) to caballine/non-caballine Equus @ ~4.0–4.5 mya; those bifurcations - based on the found fossils - all originated from North America (orange color).
[next @~1mya (the lower orange (North America) caballine arm from node 3): leading to E. caballus (green: Eurasia) --> domesticated [1] horses]
Regarding the causes of the Late Quaternary extinctions [2] it is pretty hard to pinpoint a single cause e.g. climate change etc. and there are a lot of hypotheses floating around (probably the most curious/spectacular of the bunch: younger dryas impact theory).
But at some point regardless of the causes - approx. 10.000 years ago - there are no traces found of (wild) horses in the Americas, anymore; they only reemerge again with the reintroduction by the European colonists in the 15/16th century.
[0]https://elifesciences.org/articles/29944/figures#content https://elifesciences.org/articles/29944/figures#content
[1]https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/horse-domestication-dna-indo-european-science https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/horse-dom...
[2]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8654998/#!po=32.9365 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8654998/#!po=32...
- mcculley 4y agoI had read this kind of timeline before but then more recently encountered claims that the Native Americans had horses (e.g., https://indiancountrytoday.com/news/yes-world-there-were-horses-in-native-culture-before-the-settlers-came https://indiancountrytoday.com/news/yes-world-there-were-hor...). Is there any validity to these claims?
- progre 4y agoThe overlap between the last known modern horse and the first people in America is about 2000 years. If they domesticated horses in that time, how come the horses didn't thrive along with the human population? I think the horse population where already on the brink of vanishing due to climate change after the last ice age, and the new Americans simply ate the last of them.
- dav_Oz 4y agoI have quickly scanned the Phd thesis [0] and regarding the citied (basically the same sources as mine above) DNA analysis and fossils found (carbon dating) the uncertainties in the measurements themselves are given as evidence of "denial". Apart from presupposing a "western mindset/bias" there is no clear pointing evidence given to the contrary other than the indigenous oral/cultural history; it is after all a Phd in "Indigenous Studies". So, the biological hard evidence (phylogeny/populations) seems pretty weak. But of course one should be open to the possibility, there are a lot of twists, turns, dead ends ... in history (we have very limited datapoints), especially farther afield. [0]https://m.box.com/shared_item/https%3A%2F%2Fapp.box.com%2Fs%2Fzhfcqgrwr4gyquq66206cwa9u3873qtm https://m.box.com/shared_item/https%3A%2F%2Fapp.box.com%2Fs%...