I saw something interesting in the August 2011 issue of New Mexico magazine. On page 41, there is a picture of ancient petroglyphs, found at Pueblo Bonito, New Mexico. The picture clearly shows men riding four legged animals …could they be horses?
These petroglyphs date from ca. AD 1300.
I understood that horses were introduced to North America by Coronado, in about 1580.
Could these be depictions of another animal?
For those interested, you can see a photo of the image here.
As for what it is, it’s a picture of a man riding a horse.
Dating rock art accurately is near impossible, after all it’s drawn on stones, with stone tools and stone pigments. It’s going to date the same age as the rock. Some people have tried dating paintings using fluorescence techniques or minute traces of the brush material left behind, but the results are always considered highly suspect.
So “ca. AD 1300” is to be taken to mean +/- a thousand years, at best. So it’s simply a picture of a man riding a horse. Probably a Spaniard and possibly an Indian from after horses were trained by them.
Pictures of that sort are found aroundthe world. I guess people riding horses makes a big impression on people who have never seen such a thing before.
It could also be that the structures themselves have been otherwise dated to ca.1300 and the petroglyphs were (obviously) painted much later. Such subtleties are sometimes lost on the writers of glossy general interest magazines.
If that’s the same image Blake posted, the figure appears to have a pointy helmet on. That in itself makes me think of the Spanish morion, further suggesting the image was made after contact.
Unless you get lucky, and there is some organic matter on top of the paint. You date that matter to get a lower bound on the age.
Horses were re-introduced by the Spaniards. They had been living quite happily in North America until about the time of the arrival of the early savages. (Coincidence?) Still doesn’t explain the petroglyph, as that would have been quite a few millennia than the estimated date.
Hard to tell from the photo, but is there any paint on that carving at all? Damn hard to tell when a rock was carved without any organic residue.
I can’t offer the cite, cos I’m remembering something from a long long time ago, but I’m sure horses were in America before any settlers got there and the idea of using them as beasts of burden, or a form of transport was introduced by the Europeans.
Looks more like a tapir to me.
Just kidding. It has to be a horse. As has been mentioned, horses were present in the Americas before humans arrived (in fact, most of their evolutionary history took place in North America). They became extinct in North America about 12,000 years ago, about the same time as the spread of Paleoindian hunters. (I am not sure of the exact timing of their extinction in South America.) They were re-introduced into the Americas by the Spanish in 1493.
Horses may have arrived in some areas prior to the actual presence of Europeans because of the dispersal of feral stock or perhaps introduction by Indians (who had gotten them from Europeans). But all the horses present in the Americas now are descended from Old World stock.
A completely different take is that the figure is not on top of the animal. He/she seems to be standing by the side of the animal. And the animal could be a deer or some such. And give the relatively short legs, other animals could be possible.
So it could merely be a man attacking/whatever an indigenous animal.
Rock carvings can be dated by the amount of weathering of the grooves. But it’s not an exact science.
Maybe its a fundamentalist riding a dinosaur
Wielding the Spear of Destiny.
I just check the link that **Blake **gave us. With all due respect to the artist, I’ve seen better art from a 6 year old. And the snake off to the left is on the same level.
Don’t fool yourselves: they’re Nephites. Or maybe Lamanites. Maybe even Jaredites or Mulekites.
The truth is out there!