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Comment by edgarvaldes | Hacker News Reader

>Parts of a jawbone and spine of a camel, and the tooth of a horse were also found at the site. Both species later became extinct in the Americas.

I didn't know that.

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I just watched a PBS video about this yesterday [1]. Horses evolved in North America, walked across the land bridge to Asia, died out in North America during the ice age, were domesticated in the Eurasian Steppe, were transported back to North America by Europeans, and then became feral on the plains that they initially evolved on.

1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZoTvXvV02A

Didn’t Native Americans use horses? So they were using European horses?

Yes they were European horses, first brought by the Spanish. Once they arrived Native Americans started using horses quite quickly.

As an interesting cultural bullet. The American Cowboy tradition is heavily influenced by the Northern-Mexican Vaqueros.

What about gauchos? Argentina used to supply a lot of beef to the word such that they had been prosperous at one time.

Vaqueros, Gauchos and Llaneros(Venezuela) probably have the same origin in horse riding country side people on the Iberian Península. But I doubt the Gauchos influenced the Cowboys since they are far, far away.

Makes sense, since Mexico is where the Spanish were.

Wild European horses reached many native peoples already in the 1600s, long before they had met any actual Europeans.

kinda related, an interesting story about pronghorn evolving speed in order to outrun North American cheetahs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHP1Ac7GX_Q

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