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Comment by phowat | Hacker News Reader

Honest question as I have no horse on this race (pun intended) and you picqued my curiosity. How the hell can the pre existence of horses be politicized?

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We had a Mayan guide when we were in the Yucatan on vacation. He spent quite a bit of time pointing out proofs (as the native Mayans see them) of horses being around the entire time. He claimed to have a college degree in archaeology, but went on a rant about non-Mayan archealogists and their bias against native Mayans. Basically, he saw the disbelief against horses being around the whole time as racially motivated. Those dumb mayans don't know what they are talking about. I'm trying now to remember the proofs he was showing, but at the time I remember being pretty surprised since it seemed cut and dry.

> I'm trying now to remember the proofs he was showing

I don't want to sound mean, but without any links to anything, any mentions of books, papers, even mentions of archaeological finds in local newspapers... what you're saying is just a story about someone you met who made some outlandish claims.

Yes. My takeaway from that account wasn't that there is necessary a hidden truth, but that some people do believe there is one and such belief correlates with their identity politics.

The fact that the argument appears to be cut and dry is also testament to the fact that it has been rehearsed many times and shared within that identity community

It's pretty dubious because horses themselves -- the kinds of horses we domesticated and ride -- are descendants from a pretty isolated genetic pocket in the Pontic-Caspian steppe, potentially all descended from a single male even.

The kind of horse that could be domesticated and ridden was not widespread, and in fact were really just hunted for meat until maybe 6500 years ago, and actually riding them came even later...

So, I mean, maybe there were equine species in North America, but their relationship to humans I doubt would be anything like what we think of horses like right now. More like a hunted species like bison or deer...

Now, dromedaries I can see. Camels, alpacas, and llamas etc. Long and ancient history with those, and in both hemispheres independently.

Camels are crazy and work well in both cold and hot climates. I saw something (I think a PBS documentary) that said they originally weren't adapted to the desert, but the artic of northern Canada or something crazy like that (many many millenia ago).

Edit: more like millions of years

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracamelus

There was, in fact, an american horse that died out that we likely hunted (or at least coexisted with). There is zero evidence of domestication of which I'm aware, though.

I guess it adds weight to the whole "natives own this land and colonizers didn't bring anything to this land", notably as push back against the other side which is "natives are backwards and this land wasn't all that useful until we brought technology (horses)."

Both caricatures ofc. But then again, they have to be because in the political arena details and facts don't matter at the end of the day as it's all about marketing.

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