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The Americas had no horses before Europeans brought them.
by James_K 2y ago
The Americas had no horses before Europeans brought them.
- TylerE 2y ago[flagged]
- dddddaviddddd 2y ago> The Americas had no horses before Europeans brought them. > Long since debunked I mean, the linked article says horses were introduced in the 1600s (brought by Europeans), and then spread throughout the Americas without requiring further European distribution.
- TylerE 2y agoThe article says the horses were in the Americas millions of years ago.
- rezonant 2y agoAnd then died out, before Cortes brought them back to the continent in 1519. Native Americans then discovered the horses before they ran into the Europeans and began spreading them across the country. > Horses evolved in the Americas around four million years ago, but by about 10,000 years ago, they had mostly disappeared from the fossil record, per the Conversation. Spanish settlers likely first brought horses back to the Americas in 1519, when Hernán Cortés arrived on the continent in Mexico. Per the new paper, Indigenous peoples then transported horses north along trade networks. Don't forget to read the whole article!
- TylerE 2y ago[flagged]
- a2tech 2y agoHorses in North America are a weird one. I believe the current thinking is that horses started in North America, migrated to Asia, then the population died off after the continents split. So there were horses in the Americas prior to the Europeans, but also potentially before humans.
- James_K 2y agoHumans and horses probably did that thing where you're looking for someone and you go to where they are then they go to where you are and you both miss eachother.
- James_K 2y ago> Spanish settlers likely first brought horses back to the Americas in 1519 This seems very compatible with what I just said.
- giantg2 2y agoThis article is saying the native Americans spread the horses faster than the Europeans spread. They still sourced the original horses from Europeans in the 1600s.
- dgfitz 2y agoOthers disagree. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/native-americans-spread-horses-through-the-west-earlier-than-thought-180981912/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/native-americans-s...
- James_K 2y ago> Spanish settlers likely first brought horses back to the Americas in 1519 No they don't.
- dgfitz 2y agoI uh, source?
- James_K 2y agohttps://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/native-americans-spread-horses-through-the-west-earlier-than-thought-180981912/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/native-americans-s...
- selimthegrim 2y agoI think the issue was whether they were hunted to extinction or not
- andrepd 2y agoYes they did, even if they were present in the continent before humans, they died out at least 10ky ago.
- lurk2 2y ago[flagged]
- James_K 2y agoYou need pack animals for civilisations. Transport is the backbone of industry and is required for the high degree of specialisation in trades that produces technological advancement.
- lurk2 2y agoYou've drawn this argument from Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel. There are a few problems with the theory: 1) Diamond's argument rests on the idea that world historical developments are effectively determined by geography (and implicitly, by factors which precede the existence of a civilization). While I can't make a strong argument against historical determinism, the conclusions Diamond draws are strange. The chief problem is that Diamond is trying to make the case that the exceptional prosperity of Northern Europe and all of its colonies was effectively a fluke of geography. The problem for Diamond is that this pattern repeats over the course of about four hundred years all over the world, not just in the places where Europeans had the advantage of small pox on their side. 2) Native Americans had access to pack animals by way of the llama. 3) The Aztecs lacked access to pack animals. They still had specialized tradesmen and constituted a civilization. The germs argument is the only one of Diamond's that I think holds any water with regards to the European conquest of North America, and perhaps I was being too brash in my original assertion (these civilizations existed, but were decimated by small pox). The issue with this argument is that it doesn't address European colonialism in Asia (where the disease factor is absent) and Subsaharan Africa (where the disease factor actually worked against Europeans). The fact of the matter is that Europeans (and specifically Northern Europeans) happened upon a method of conquest that worked. This could have been an accident of geography, biology, or ideology, but it's absurd to pretend that the model didn't exist when it was the basis of a successful campaign to conquer the world. It had nothing to do with having access to pack animals.
- James_K 2y ago
- bobsmooth 2y ago[flagged]
- James_K 2y agoWould you say this of the Jews during WW2, or do you have the understanding that it's a little less than tactful do describe the victims of genocide as "suckers"?
- andrepd 2y agoAlso no sheep, no dogs, no cows, no chicken.
- lurk2 2y agoNative Americans did have dogs. They didn't have sheep, but the Incans did have access to wool-bearing animals in the form of the alpaca (though the Incan Empire was geographically isolated so these animals never reached North America). Guinea pigs were also domesticated in this region. There were neither cows nor chickens, but there were other forms of poultry such as turkeys and ducks.
- fuzzfactor 2y agoThere sure was buffalo though.