New insights gained on early use of horses by native groups...
https://www.heritagedaily.com/2021/0...-horses/137049
“It was found in the ground in these geologic deposits from the Pleistocene–the last Ice Age,” said William Taylor, lead author of the new research and a curator of archaeology at the CU Museum of Natural History at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Based on a detailed study of the horse’s bones and DNA, however, Taylor and his colleagues concluded that it wasn’t an Ice Age mammal at all. Instead, the animal was a domesticated horse that had likely belonged to Ute or Shoshone communities before Europeans had a permanent presence in the region.
But Taylor is far from disappointed. He said the animal reveals valuable information about how Indigenous groups in the West looked after their horses.
“This study demonstrates a very sophisticated relationship between Indigenous peoples and horses,” said Taylor, also an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology. “It also tells us that there might be a lot more important clues to the human-horse story contained in the horse bones that are out there in libraries and museum collections.”
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