Quasimodo wrote:
The North American rock art record is pretty telling, as well.
There are depictions of deer, elk, moose, bison, big horn sheep (lots of those), dogs (yep, Native Americans had dogs), birds, cougars, caribou in the North, bears and bear tracks, even one depiction of a mammoth actually carved into a mammoth tusk (just recently confirmed as real).
Not one single depiction of a horse anywhere in the Western hemisphere until after the Spanish showed up.
It's hard to believe that if horses were around, someone wouldn't have drawn a picture of one. Cave art in Europe consists mostly of horses.
I had an interesting rock art experience last fall.
I was right in the early part of my dissaffection and I decided to go on a long solo motorcycle ride for a few days in Southern Utah. I ended up in a campground near Bluff, Utah on the San Juan River one night. After dinner I wandered over to the cliff face where there are several prominent petroglyph panels to view.
A big part of my loss of faith was the historicity of the Book of Mormon, and as I sat there pondering on this rock art, Lo and Behold!, there carved on the rock were images of humans on horseback. Well, I about spewed the mild barley beverage that I was sipping on! I mean, WTF! These Anasazi guys were waaay Precolumbian, right? As soon as I got to a WiFi hotspot the next day, I started digging the interwebbies to see what the mighty Google had to say, and it turns out that of course the panel is a running history of native american art and commentary spanning the centuries, not just a single precolumbian piece of art that proves precolumbian equestrians. The depictions of horses were painted/carved by Utes and Navajos, if I remember correctly.
More telling to me was my reaction and the way I have since learned to view history (and prehistory). But curses on the church for training my brain to react with fear and anxiety over the meaning of the fascinating world that we live in!