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Comment by TylerE | Hacker News Reader

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This 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.

> Spanish settlers likely first brought horses back to the Americas in 1519

This seems very compatible with what I just said.

> 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.

Horses 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.

Humans 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.

The article says the horses were in the Americas millions of years ago.

And 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!

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