Prehispanic Horses in Patagonia (update)

The established consensus is that the Spaniards reintroduced the domestic horses into North and South America following the discovery by Columbus in 1492. In Southern South America, the first horses on record were those left behind by Pedro de Mendoza's failed first founding of Buenos Aires (1536-1541). A few mares and stallions were left behind (why?) and they roamed free on the Pampas breeding at an astounding rate, wild horses soon populated the vast prairies of Central Argentina. The Indians adopted them and they were taken into Patagonia.

With this in mind, a paper published in 2023 (William Timothy Treal Taylor et al. (2023), Interdisciplinary evidence for early domestic horse exploitation in southern Patagonia. Sci.adv.9,eadk5201(2023).DOI:10.1126/sciadv.adk5201). describes the remains of horses found in Patagonia.

The site is located in the south of Santa Cruz province, between Gallegos and Coig Rivers. The remains were dated and this is what the paper states:

" Two of these horse specimens produced dates from the early 18th to mid-20th centuries. More sensitive radiocarbon discrimination between samples from this period is typically impossible due to a plateau in the calibration curve. However, one specimen, a right tibia fragment, confidently predates 1800 CE (ca. 1645–1808 cal. CE, 2 sigma calibrated range, AA114998), while a second, from the tooth row, appears to likely predate 1700 CE (ca. 1515–1800 cal. CE, AA115001). A guanaco bone shaft fragment was also successfully dated to ca. 1522–1800 cal. CE (2 sigma calibrated range, AA115000), and carbonized food residue from a single ceramic sherd was dated to a similar range (ca. 1645–1800 cal. CE, 2 sigma, UCIAMS-280680). When analyzing horse occupation at the site as a Bayesian uniform phase model in OxCal (https://c14.arch.ox.ac.uk/oxcal/OxCal.html) and assuming the date of 1536 (start of the Mendoza expedition) as the earliest possibility date of horse introduction, the posterior modeled probability distribution for the adoption of horses at Chorrillo Grande 1 has a median modeled start date of ca. 1617 cal. CE, with the most likely date for this adoption falling between 1540 and 1650 cal. CE (1 sigma). When all dates from the site, including guanaco and foodcrust dates, are also included, Bayesian uniform phase modeling produces an even narrower posterior distribution for the onset of site activity, with a median modeled start date of ca. 1627 cal. CE and the most likely boundary falling between 1599 and 1653 cal. CE (1 sigma)."

So the dating is based on the assumption that horses were introduced by Mendoza in 1536! But, what if there had been horses, the native American horses, that had survived the megafaunal extinction in Patagonia? Wouldn't these horses mean that the 1536 AD is not valid?

The genetic analysis found that these were specimens of Domestic horse (Equus caballus), but that is what the Megafaunal American horses were. They were genetically identical to modern horses. So this finding does not clarify the origin of these Patagonian horses.

The lower boundary set at 1536 AD. See Supplementary materials

The script used to date the samples (OxCal Analysis) had a Boundary set at 1536 AD (read more here) which establishes a lower boundary meaning that the samples will be dated to a later date than this lower boundary!!

This is like reconfirming a previously established axiomatic assumption. We decide that horses were brought to America after 1536 so all horse remains found will be dated after that date. Bad science!

Even so, the Confidence Interval includes dates prior to 1536 as possible.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

Curly haired horses revisited

I came across more information while researching the sencond edition of my book, regarding these odd horses, which have also been found in Patagonia.

Patagonian curly-haired horse. Andrea Sede, Source

Gerardo Rodriguez who was born in Maquinchao, and studied to be a veterinarian and his partner Andrea Sede own Yeguada Rodriguez, a small ranch in Maquinchao in the middle of the Province of Rio Negro (map). The place is arid, and located on by National Route 23 that crosses northern Patagonia from east to west, linking the Atlantic coast at San Antonio Oeste with Bariloche on Lake Nahuel Huapi. It still has many unpaved stretches. It follows the ancient native trail (see the spot on my interactive map of Muster's 1870 journey) and the railway.

The place is at the foot of the basaltic Somuncurá plateau, with little water and continental climate with hot, dry summers, and cold winters.

In 2006 Gerardo while working as a veterinarian for the government conducted a survey of the local ranchers in Somuncurá and to his surprise, he saw a curly-haired horse, when he asked the locals they said that "the horses have curls all winter, and in the summer they go" adding that there many more in the past.

Gerardo obtained several of these animals wild horses and now breeds them (Source). The herd now has 40 horses. This is their facebook with many photographs of their horses.

Unique genetic mutation

He also managed to have their DNA tested by the Texas A&M University that found that they have a unique mutation that is not linked to the known KRT25 mutation that causes curly hair in horses. A study has "identified the KRT25:p.R89H variant as responsible for the dominant curly trait, but a second dominant locus may also be involved in the shape of hairs within North American Curly horses." Yet, as it clearly states, other genetic sites may also cause curly hair. It is probably one of these "unknown" mutations that is present in the Maquinchao curlies.

Another paper cites literature and confirms another gene in curly hair, SP6: " KRT25 and SP6 were associated with curly coat in Bashkir Curly Horses and Missouri Foxtrotters by Thomer et al. A variant (KRT25:p.R89H) in the KRT25 gene was found to be responsible for the curly phenotype in North-American and French horses." But these two modified genes are not present in the Patagonian horses.

For the North American curly haired horses, the trait is caused by the KRT25 gene. If a horse is homozygous for it, it will have coarse hair, no mane or tail.

Homozygous means it carries two copies of the same allele, one from each parent. Heterozygous means it only carries one copy of the allele (see image above). If the "b" allele causes curly hair, a "bb" horse is homozygous for it, and a "Bb" or "bB" horse will be heterozygous.

In the case of heterozygous horses they are curly and have a mane and tail, but the hairs can be pulled out easily.

The mutation causesthe hair follicle to be curved, and as the hair grows, it curves.

The other mutation SP6 is also found in North America in a line detected in a horse called Curly Jim. These horses have curly hair and also an abundant mane and tail. This gene alters the shape of the follicle making it oval, which promotes the formation of curls.

If a horse has both genes KRT25, being epistatic, supresses the SPG variant, overriding it.

Interestingly the Lakota (or Dakota) people say that these horses existed in the days before the Europeans arrived in America. A statement by Claire Henderson published in 1991, tells that the Dakota/Lakota native people firmly believe that the aboriginal North American horse did not become extinct after the last Ice Age, and that it was part of their pre-contact culture:

"According to Elders, the aboriginal pony had the following characteristics: It was small, about 13 hands, it had a “strait” back necessitating a different saddle from that used on European horses, wider nostrils, larger lungs so that its endurance was proverbial. One breed had a long mane, and shaggy (curly) hair, while another had a “singed mane.”"

See: The Aboriginal North American Horse, Statement of Claire Henderson, History Dept. Batiment de Koninck, Laval University, Quebec, Canada. Feb. 1991. Online.

Regarding the Dakota people, Lieut. Col. Garrick Mallery Boston published an article in the USGS Bulletin (v.iii, no. 1) back in 1877, discussing the Calendar of the Dakota Nation. The entry for 1803 reads "They stole some curly horses from the Crows Some of these horses are still seen on the plains the hair growing in closely curling tufts resembling in texture the negro's woolly pile It is not however supposed that Frémont's celebrated woolly horse was of this breed The symbol is a horse with black marks for the tufts Crows are known to have been early in the possession of horses".

We have already mentioned Fremont's curly haired horse in a previous post (this horse was discovered in 1849). Read the online article from 1849.

Origin of the Patagonian curlies

Where did they come from. According to Gerardo (Source) there are three options:

1. They are from the original horses and mares brought by Pedro de Mendoza with his expedition to found a city (Buenos Aires) on the Rio de la Plata in 1536. The expedition failed due to the hostile natives, the lack of willingness to cultivate the land and the fact that an expedition sent up the Paraná River found that the Guarani natives in what is now Paraguay were friendlier and the weather better. So they abandoned the town in 1541 and heaed for Asunció. They burned the remains of Buenos Aires, and left some mares and stallions behind. These multiplied quickly on the vast grasslands of the Pampas and when the Spaniards returned in 1580 to found the town for a second time, they found tens of thousands of wild horses. Some of these horses evolved a curly hair mutation when they reached northern Patagonia.
2. They came from the expedition of the Franciscan Bishop Hernando de Trejo (I am quoting the Source, but disagree with this information as Trejo never visited Patagonia), who "in an expedition conducted into the South of Argentina between the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th century introduced specimens of this race."
3. The horses came from the north, via the Strait of Bering and were originally from the Russian region of Bashkiria.
4. The last option is outlandish: "let's not ignore the story that tells about the role played by the horses used by the Knights Templar in their long journey transporting the Holy Grail escaping from Europe where they were being persecuted, as mentioned in the company's website". (I commented about these knights in a 2010 post).

We know that they existed in Argentina. Ricardo Hogg, (1941) in an article (Sobre vacas ñatas y otros temas camperos) reported that the curly horse was rare but not unknown in the Pampas region of Argentina however, by then "the curly haired horse, variety almost extinct".

The International Curly Horse Organization mentions them too (see here), the article says that they have not yet been able to identify the gene that causes this "curly winter coat in these Patagonian curly horses."

It also adds that the DNA tests gave surprising results. The horses weree not related to the Andalusian or Lusitano horses of Southern Spain (Mendoza's expedition sailed from Cadiz, and would have brought horses from the Andalucia region). Instead, they are closer to horses from northwestern Spain, from Galicia: " they were related to the smaller Celtic type horses located in Northern Iberian Peninsula. The Patagonian curly horses were genetically close to the Mexican Galiceno horse, which is thought to be a descendent of Northern Spain’s Celtic type horses brought to the Yucatan by Cortez during his conquest of the Aztec nation. The Galiceno horse is a much smaller horse than the Patagonian curly horses standing between 12 to 13.2 hands. There are less than 100 Galiceno horses in the States and Mexico. Other relationships were established by the dendrogram. Patagonian curly horses have a close association with ancestors of the Galiceno horse, which are the Portuguese Garrano and the Spanish Galician and Asturcon."

The following "tree" is included in the above mentioned article

Why would the Patagonian and the Mexican Galiceno horses be closer on the phylogenetic tree? By the way, they are also close to the Mallorquin and Menorquin breeds from the Baleares Islands.

However, Pedro Lozano, in his Historia de la conquista del Paraguay, Rio de la Plata y Tucuman written in the mid 1700s, (see p. 272 below) clearly states that Mendoza's expedition "brought from Andalucia to these provinces" no refernce to horses from Galicia or other parts of Spain.

It is clear that the horses in Patagonia have Spanish horse genes, but, could they have admixed with native pre-Hispanic horses that somehow survived in Patagonia after the megafaunal dying?

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

The Cuero at Lake Mascardi

The Cuero at Lake Mascasrdi

This is a sighting reported in the local media on August 9, 2022. The image below shows the spot where this event took place (a normal, beach on a mountain lake, by a campground.

Subtitulo

Pebble breach on the northeastern tip of Lake Mascardi, looking south/b>. Copyright © 2025 by Austin Whittall

The translation of the article is the following:

"This story ... was compiled by the writer and investigator, Dora Fornaciari and published with other texts of myths and legends in the "Revista Patagónica".
This is the story in first person of an anonimous informant: 'My grandmother said that one time, up here, on the tip of the Mascardi, at the end of the Gutiérrez, there, on that shore, inwards, on the tip of the Mascardi, a very old man, who told that he had lost a dark colt, and was out looking for it, and one day, he said he was going along the coast, the shore of the lake, inwards, to see if he could find it, and he saw a colt, but dark, dark and it was tugging his colt... and it was like half-past eleven, and at that time the animals come out of the water to sunbathe, and he saw it there, but this dark colt didn't notice him. So he threw his lassoo at it, and caught it, and while it was on dry land it didn't pull with strength but as soon as it touched the water, he was dragging him in, into the deep water. And he had to cut the lassoo, he had no choice, because, who knows, the dark colt would have taken him. It was a real cuero.'

This is the source of this post.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

Curly Haired Horses: indigenous to America?

Yesterday's post dealt with horses and mentioned the peculiar gait of some of them, specially the Latin American ones. Today's post looks into curly haired horses.

They are interesting because they have been reported in Asia and in America, but not in Europe. If the mutation that causes it survived in America and did not reach the New World carried by Spanish or European horses, then it means that it survived here in indigenous American horses.

In Paraguay 1800 AD

Felix Manuel de Azara (1742 - 1821) was a Spanish military officer who was stationed in Southern South America from 1771 to 1801. During this period he studied the local natural history and later wrote several books. In onte of them (The Natural History of the Quadrupeds of Paraguay and the River La Plata, Volume 1 pp 42 he described a curly haired horse found in Paraguay, South America:

"I have seen many crisp-haired horses, called in Paraguay Pichaí; their hair is curly, like that of the Negros of Guinea and their hoof as narrow as that of Spanish mules, in which they differ from the common run of horses. I have seen them in various colors, but not piebald nor white".

Note: Piebald are horses whose coat has large black and white patches, and the native Guaraní word "Pichaí" means "curly".

Curly haired horses are not very common and Azara wrote that "...as they are very ugly, attempts have been made to exterminate them by castration, and even by killing the mares", so it isn't surprising that there were not many records of curly haired horses in historic records.

I have not been able to find refrences about them in Spanish or Latin American chronicles during this period, and the only historic reference comes from China, 1,200 years before Azara saw these horses in Paraguay.

In China 600 AD

Li Shimin was the second Emperor of the Tang dynasty, and ruled China as Emperor Taizong of Tang from 626 to 649 AD. He was very fond of his war horses and had his tomb (the Zhaoling Mausoleum) decorated with stone reliefs of them. One of these steeds was Quanmaogua, which is Chinese for "Curly hair horse".

It had a wavy saffron-yellow coat, the relief shows him with nine arrows sticking out of his body, yet he has an arrogant and wound defying attitude. Can you make out the curls in the stone sculpture?

Quanmaogua curly horse China 600 AD. www.penn.museum

Asian and North American curly hair horses

Darwin wrote about these horses in 1860, and mentioned three distinct locations where they could be found (Paraguay, mentioning Azara's text), Russia ("A Russian breed of horses is said to have curled hair" and the US ("Dr. Canfield informs me that a breed with curly hair was formed by selection at Los Angeles in North America.")

Let's look into both geographical locations:

Russia

The curly haired horse from Russia (actually, from Tajikistan) is known as Lokai. The International Encyclopedia of Horse Breeds, by Bonnie L. Hendricks, mentions the Lokai horse as follows:

"This breed was developed by the Uzbek Lokai tribe in the sixteenth century... the surface hairs of the coat are characteristically curly", but it does not seem to have always been so, the breed is recent, but based on wild ponies:

"in the Lokai breed the foundation sire of the curly-coated strain was a golden sorrel named Farfor, found in 1959 in the Kolchoz Lamanov in the Parchar Region... curly fromt the ears to the hooves, with tight curls like a Karakul lamb."

These horses even exhibit Appaloosa color markings according to James Blakely (Horses and Horse Sense: The Practical Science of Horse Husbandry)

America

The American curly haired horse could be related to these Lokai horses: Eduard De Steiguer in Wild Horses of the West: History and Politics of America's Mustangs is categoric: "Mustangs in Nevada's Fish Creek HMA wear the unusual wavy-haired coat of the Lokai Curly, a breed brought from Russia and released on the range by an American horse fancier in 1874". There is no source quoted for this statement. But we do know (Darwin) that someone had bred the curly hair horses in Los Angeles in the 1850s-60s.

However there is an older date mentioning curly haired horses in North America, and this comes from the Lakota people. Pictographs of the North American Indians, by Garrick Mallery mentions the Lakota winter counts. Their year spanned the period between two winters and they drew images on hides as a record of each year: one image per year, recording the most memorable event. The story behind it was then passed on by oral tradition.

The 1803-04 winter count was known as the one where "Blackfeet steals many curly horses from the Assinaboines..." or, according to another native, White-Cow-Killer: "Plenty-wooly-horses winter."

The Lakota were also known as the Teton Sioux, and they lived in the upper Mississippi Region (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and the Dakotas) and later moved by war into the Great Plains. We have depictions of these horses drawn in 1880-81 (Spirit Beings and Sun Dancers Black Hawk's Vision of the Lakota World, Indian Pictures drawn by Black Hawk Chief Medicine Man of the Sioux, by Janet Catherine Berlo:

There is an interesting written document (The Aboriginal North American Horse, Statement of Claire Henderson, History Dept. Batiment de Koninck, Laval University, Quebec, Canada. Feb. 1991), which I will quote below:

"Dakota⁄Lakota people have an extensive "horse vocabulary," and they distinguish between their "own" horses, which among other names they call "sunkdudan," the small legged horse, and the European imported horse which they call the long-legged horse, orthe American Horse.
...
this writer [C. Henderson] used LaVerendrie's maps and diaries, as well as other documentation and interviewed numerous Elders and old ranchers. Eventually the site was located in Wyoming, and all of the people he met and traveled with were found to be Lakotas. But these interviews also lead to a wealth of information about the Indian pony.
According to Elders, the aboriginal pony had the following characteristics: It was small, about 13 hands, it had a "strait" back necessitating a different saddle from that used on European horses, wider nostrils, larger lungs so that its endurance was proverbial. One breed had a long mane, and shaggy (curly) hair, while another had a "singed mane."

So here we have it, one of the Lakota's local (not European) horse breeds had curly hair.

Does this mean that these were indigenous horses? Horses that did not become extinct in America?

Recent horse remains found in the Americas

There is extensive evidence of Prehistoric horses, but most of these remains date back to the end of the last Ice Age, and then American horses seem to have disappeared. Their Eurasian counterparts survived, American ones died out. But is this the case?

A paper published in 2016 (Difusion temprana del caballo en territorio de la Actual Republica Oriental del Uruguay, Bracco D, Bracco R, Fariña R. Temas Americanistas No. 37, p 67-87 Dec. 2016) tells of a domestic horse dated to 1465 - 1635 and 1350 - 1630 AD by C14 and OSL methods. Which is on the fringe of the arrival of Spaniards to the region (after 1516, and with horses after 1536).

More horse remains have been discovered in Carlsbad California, US, where a ritual burial "took place sometime between 1625 and 1705. So these horses died at least 50 years before San Diego Mission de Alcala, the first of the California missions, was founded in 1769.", of course these could have been stray beasts that ran away from the Spanish settlements in New Mexico or even Mexico, colonized after 1520.

American horses would be indistinguishable from European ones and their mtDNA (image is from Cheek tooth morphology and ancient mitochondrial DNA of late Pleistocene horses from the western interior of North America: Implications for the taxonomy of North American Late Pleistocene Equus, Barrón-Ortiz CI, Rodrigues AT, Theodor JM, Kooyman BP, Yang DY, Speller CF (2017) . PLoS ONE 12(8): e0183045. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0183045) show how Prehispanic Argentine horses -blue arrows- mix with those from the Urals and modern domesticated horses from Europe:

What causes curly hair?

There are two mutations that cause wavy hair in horses (An epistatic effect of KRT25 on SP6 is involved in curly coat in horses, Annika Thomer, Maren Gottschalk, Anna Christmann, Fanny Naccache, Klaus Jung, Marion Hewicker-Trautwein, Ottmar Distl & Julia Metzger Scientific Reports volume 8, Article number: 6374 (2018) Published: 23 April 2018):

"we identified two missense variants in KRT25 and SP6 acting independently on the development of a curly coat... Hair fibers from both mutant SP6 or mutant KRT25 horses showed typical curly hair characteristics like a polymorphic shape, restricted medulla and rotated shafts with depressions. These findings, which were also identified in human, rat, mice and cattle curl types, were postulated to be essential properties of curly hair"

And these were found only in American horses, another paper The Genetics of Curly coated horses by Wilkinson M., says: "Two SNP mutations located within the 11th equine chromosome, KRT25 and SP6, have shown to be the causative mutations in two types of North American curly coated horses. The two mutations were not found as causative mutations in equine populations in Asia, South America, and some additional equine populations in North America. This suggests that there are many more causative mutations yet to be isolated."

If this is true, then the story of the Russian horses introduced into Nevada in 1874 would not be possible because they'd have the Asian mutation and not the one found in America.

Patagonia

An online article states that "There are curly coated horses in Argentina. In the wild horse herds of Patagonia, a percentage of the horses have curly coats. Hair samples have been obtained from several of these horses and they do not have the KRT25 mutation. Whether they have one of the undiscovered mutations mentioned in North American curly coated horses will be determined after isolation of other curly genes"

It ads that "In 2013, Andrea and Gerardo Rodriquez contacted Angie Gaines through the Curly Mustang Association Facebook page. The couple stated that they were raising curly coated horses that had been captured from the wild horse herds of Patagonia, Argentina. Their ranch was close to a remote village named Maquinchao" (in Rio Negro province, in the Patagonian steppe) "Hair follicle samples were sent from Argentina to Gus Cothran's lab in Texas. The samples proved not to have the KRT25 mutation". This ranch is the "Yeguada Rodriguez" ranch, but I have found more information on Yeguada Rodriguez which states in Spanish the following (translated by me to English): "Yeguada Rodríguez is the only breeder of Curly American Bashkir in South America... Currently there are just over 4000 bashkir in the world, mainly in the US, and the only one in South America with registered DNA is in Maquinchao." The picture below is from their website:

If they are American Curly Bashkir then they can't be "wild horse herds of Patagonia".

I have tried to find references about curly "bagual" (feral horses in Patagonia) a word derived from the native Mapuche word "Cahual" which in turn comes from the Spanish word for horse (Caballo).

Nobody seems to have written about curly Patagonia bagual horses. But I did find a refrence (Los aborigenes del pais de cuyo, Cap. I PP Cabrera). It describes several people who having been captured by the natives managed to escape and reach the Spanish settlements in Southern Cuyo region in what is now Argentina (Mendoza province), just north of Patagonia.

These events took place in 1658. One of these men remembered a "Corregidor" or Mayor appointed by the King, from Chillán in Chile, who had a "curly horse" (caballo crespo), though he couldn't remember the man's name.

Nowadays there are long-tangled haired ponies in Chiloe (see this photo of a Chilote horse, which in the comments is called a "Chascón", word used in Peru and Chile to name a "curly horse"). This Chilote horse is (source) located on the same branch of the phylogenetic tree that holds all of the gaited Latin American horses mentioned in our previous post).

The curly horse was not unknown in the Pampas region of Argentina: It is mentioned by Ricardo Hogg ( Sobre vacas ñatas y otros temas camperos in La Prensa No.26.176 Nov 9, 1941 Secc. 2, 4e):

"... the curly haired horse, variety almost extinct nowadays".

I will try to find out more on Curly Haired horses in Patagonia.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2014 by Austin Whittall © 

Extant Prehispanic Patagonian horses (part IV)

I am updating this thread, which had 3 parts, and which I wrote back in 2013. (part 1, part 2, part 3).

I stumbled across a very interesting blog post [by Maju in his blog "For what they were… we are": Horse genetics (autosomal DNA)] which mentions the following paper: Genetic Diversity in the Modern Horse Illustrated from Genome-Wide SNP Data, Jessica L. Petersen et al, Published: January 30, 2013 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0054997.

The Parsimony tree from this paper is pictured below (from the paper and with Maju's comments):

As you can see the branches closest to the root of the tree are the Latin American breeds from Puerto Rico, Peru and Brazil, followed by the Iberian breeds.

Maju's comment was revealing: "Ignoring by the moment the Latin American breeds, which stem directly from the root of the tree, the oldest division is between the Iberian breeds (Lusitano, Andalusian) and all others, which in turn split in two groups, both scattered in Europe and Asia (different parts of Asia however). This would seem to confirm the dual origins theory.
However there are two more elements to consider: on one side the Northern Iberian breeds (apparently even older than the Southern ones, per Warmuth 2011) are not being considered here.
The other element to ponder is the most strange position of the three Latin American breeds. As there were no horses in America at the arrival of Europeans, the origins of such anomaly must be in the Old World, meaning probably that these breeds retain genetics of even older populations. These could be the already mentioned Northern Iberian breeds but they are said to have some admixture from Berber horses (or Barb) as well and this population (argued to be very old) has not been subject to any genetic study as of now."

The point is that these Latin American breeds appear to be even closer to the asnine root than their alleged Iberian forebearers, that is, they are even "older" than the European breeds that are their ancestors. How come?

A recent paper by Ludovico Orlando et al., (Tracking Five Millennia of Horse Management with Extensive Ancient Genome Time Series Cell, vol 177:6 P1419-1435.E31, May 30, 2019 DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2019.03.049) also noticed that there was a very basal Iberian breed, now extinct in the lineage of modern horses:

"We find that two extinct horse lineages existed during early domestication, one at the far western (Iberia) and the other at the far eastern range (Siberia) of Eurasia. None of these contributed significantly to modern diversity."

Below is a tree from Ludovico Orlando's paper. The pink branch at the top is the "ancient" Iberian lineage, followed by the Siberian one in pale blue:

However Orlando's paper does not have the DNA of American horses -logically because his team was studying domesticated horses, and that happened in Eurasia not America.

Could local "native" American horses, of the original American equine stock have mixed with later evolved Iberian horses brought by Portuguese and Spaniards to the Americas?

This would explain their position as more ancestral in the tree.

The interesting point is the "gait" gene. The Spanish and Latin American horses have a special gait.

Horses have gaits, they trot, gallop, canter and walk. But some breeds have another natural gait that is very peculiar (The rider appears motionless in the saddle, and there is no perceptible up and down motion of the horse's back); watch this video with the gait of a Peruvian Paso Fino horse (yes, it is one of those mentioned further up as a Latin American breed).

The Peruvian Paso Fino is one of many gaited horses. This is due to the DMRT3 "gait" gene, which (see source): "...must have diverged from a common ancestral sequence within the last 10,000 years. Thus, the mutation occurred either just before domestication or more likely some time after domestication and then spread across the world as a result of selection on locomotion traits".

Petersen's paper (mentioned further up) also noticed this: "It thus seems that the genetic variant associated with the gait phenotype arose well before the separation of breeds.", and notices that not only Iberian horses and Latin American ones are gaited, so are the Icelandic horses but these, "Instead of clustering with the other gaited breeds, the Icelandic clusters with the Shetland" suggesting a separate origin for this group, a branch that probably split from the original group carrying the mutation.

The gait trait is found all over the world -humans took their horses with them- in almost half the breeds tested and at "a frequency ranging from 1% to 100%" Worldwide frequency distribution of the 'Gait keeper' mutation in the DMRT3 gene, M. Promerova et al., Animal Genetics, vol 45:2 April 2014 P 274-282 DOI: 10.1111/age.12120). Some believe that it has been artificially selected for, by human domestication, as riders prefer this type of gait.

The ancient Asian Przewalski's horse does not carry this mutation, and although some suggest an English origin ca. 800 AD for the mutation, it was present in Spain over 2000 years ago because Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder (23–79 AD) wrote that horses from what is now Asturias in Northern Spain moved both legs on the same side alternately and did not trot.

In the Americas, apart from the Latin American horses mentioned above, the North American Indian's appaloosa breed also has a particular gate known as the "shuffle" (see appaloosa shuffle video). This horse is better known for its spotted coat, which was favored by the Natives.

A global distribution map of the DMRT3 mutation (from Promerova et al.)

As you can see no Southern South American (i.e. Caballo Criollo Argentino or Chileno) were sampled.

Considering that it originated at least 10 Kya, and is found in America and Eurasia, it is very possible that this mutation arose in the original American horse stock and spread across Eurasia. The Spanish horses brought to America by the conquistadors mixed with native horses that also carried the mutation hence Latin American horses with 100% levels of this gait gene.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2019 by Austin Whittall © 

New input on Extant Prehispanic horses in Patagonia

In 1699, a French explorer who sailed along the coast of South America, Gouin de Beauchesne, reported a strange discovery at Puerto Deseado in what is now Santa Cruz province, Argentina.

Mariners used to stop at that point since it has a fresh water spring - hence its name "Spring Bay". Finding water is quite infrequent along the Patagonian coast, so it was a well known place.

His men disembarqued and explored the surroundings. They found a skeleton of a horse and the animal's hoofs were so strange that they removed a leg and took it back on board with them as a curio.

Beauchesne kept it and later showed it to some "Spaniards who regularly trade horses in Chile, who told [him] that that horse had fed in a sandy region due to the bulge it had on its hoof, which caused it to not go far from where [they] found it." [1]

What strange deformity did the animal have on its hoofs? Or... were its hoofs normal and those of a pre-hispanic native American horse (supposedly extinct at the time)? By the way, do these horses' hoofs differ from those of modern Eurasian ones?

I have written about Hippidions in a post back in 2009 (Extant Prehispanic Horses?), but Goin de Beauchesne's report could be additional proof of their survival until recently.

Sandy terrain hoofs

Wild horses tend to have short heels (which are more comfortable=, the third phalanx and the sole are parallel to the ground. The "white line" has a stronger positition when resting than the third phalanx due to the small angles of the hoof. This configuration bends the leg and cushions impact when the horse trots. See the image below: [2]

What hoofs look like . Copyright © 2014 by Austin Whittall

But what were the hoofs of a Hippidion (the horse, native to America, that is believed to have become extinct just a few millennia before the arrival of European horses (after 1492 AD) like?

Below is the image of a Hippidion hoof (from [3]), it looks quite similar to a wild horse's hoof:

Of course since hippidion was a "wild" horse it is likely that its hoofs, like those of modern wild horses, adopted a characteristic shape due to lack of horse shoes and the rugged Patagonian terrain.

On the other hand the horse remains may have surprised the sailors because of its vestigial phalanxes, which are not so noticeable in modern horses.

It is a pity that there is no drawing or sketch of this horse's leg

Sources

[1] Relation du voyague du Sr. de Beuchesne au Chili dans la du sud de l'Amerique... Manuscript Paris Vicennes library.
[2] www.alexbrollo.com, El Casco.
[3] Maria T. Alberdi, Laura Miotti and Jose L. Prado. Hippidion saldiasi Roth, 1899 (Equidae, Perissodactyla), at thePiedra Museo Site (Santa Cruz, Argentina): Its Implication forthe Regional Economy and Environmental Reconstruction. Journal of Archaeological Science (2001)28, 411–419doi:10.1006/jasc.2000.0647

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2014 by Austin Whittall © 

More on Horses in Patagonia in the 1580s

Another post on the possibility of extant megafaunal horses in South America in the 1500s.

This continues my previous post on the subject.

I have found some references (more below) stating that Spanish explorers sighted natives riding horses in the region next to the Strait of Magellan in 1580. I decided to check the original sources and was surprised to find out that it was not so!:

Sarmiento de Gamboa 1580s

The account of the adventures and exploration of the Strait of Magellan can be found in Sarmiento de Gamboa's book [1]. And, there is an interesting part covering the interrogation that Tomé Hernandez faced in Lima, Peru in 1620 (forty years after the events).

Tome had traveled under the command of Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa to settle the Strait of Magellan in 1581. The expedition managed to set up two small villages but the ships with supplies never arrived and this doomed the colonies. The settlers were left to die of starvation and disease. The natives accosted them. And very few were alive two and a half years later when English privateer Thomas Cavendish sailed by and offered to take them to Chile.

All except one refused (they were Catholics, Cavendish an English protestant and enemy of Spain), Tomé.

Many years later, the Spaniards, worried about the intentions of the English regarding Patagonia and, also, wanting to know more about that mysterious area, interrogated him.

The image below highlights the interrogation regarding horses. I will translate it:

When Asked: Do the Indians rode horses and if there are any in that land? He Said: That whenever he saw them, they were on foot and that he saw no horses at all

No horses in 1580. From [1]

Darwin 1830s

However Charles Darwin, in his "Voyage of the Beagle" wrote [2] about the "Indians" by the Strait of Magellan:

"In the time of Sarmiento (1580), these Indians had bows and arrows, now long since disused; they then also possessed some horses.
This is a very curious fact, showing the extraordinarily rapid multiplication of horses in South America. The horse was first landed at Buenos Ayres in 1537, and the colony being then for a time deserted, the horse ran wild;* in 1580, only forty-three years afterwards, we hear of them at the Strait of Magellan! Mr. Low informs me, that a neighbouring tribe of foot-Indians is now changing into horse-Indians: the tribe at Gregory Bay giving them their worn-out horses, and sending in winter a few of their best skilled men to hunt for them. [2]

I went over the text of Gamboa's book and he never mentions horses, only (on page 95 see pdf link below [1]), "deer" and "anta" (that is, tapir... I have posted on tapir in Patagonia elsewhere.)

So, in all fairness, Darwin misinterpreted Sarmiento's text assuming there were horses here. Sarmiento never mentioned horses. Other Spanish authors of the time did, but not Sarmiento.

Sources

[1] xxvii Page Viage al Estrecho de Magallanes por el Capitan Pedro Sarmiento de Gambóa en ... By Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa 1768

[2] Darwin, C. R. 1845. Journal of researches into the natural history and geology of the countries visited during the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle round the world, under the Command of Capt. Fitz Roy, R.N. 2d edition. London: John Murray. pp 232

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2013 by Austin Whittall © 

Extant Patagonian Horses Part III

This is our third post on the series about "Extant Native American Megafaunal Horses", and our second part regarding Anibal Cardoso's 1912 essay on the subject [1]

See the previous posts:

Part II
Part I

Cardoso mentions that the natives engraved rocks with American ostrich (Rhea) foot prints and also horse hoof marks. I have posted about this type of rock art in Patagonia ( Read More ).

He then goes on to analyze the Boleadoras. These were made by placing a stone inside a tightly fitting leather pouch, tied to a braided leather cord. They came in different varieties:

Bola perdida, a single stone, used to hit an animal or kill an opponent by smashing them on the head. They could be hurled long distances at running prey, to knock them on the head or body.

The small 2 stone variety. It was used to hunt Rhea (American ostrich) and was guanaco (the animal from which domesticated llama descend, native to Argentina). These were known as Bolas. One stone was larger than the other one (it was held by this one while the other whirled around the head). They were thrown at the neck of the animal because it was difficult to ensnare their legs.

The larger 3 stone variety used exclusively to hunt horses. The stones were considerably larger than the "bolas" type.

Bolas are found where guanaco and Rhea are abundant, from Bolivia to the tip of Patagonia. The 3 stone kind are found in the Pampas and Patagonia: the land of the American horse.

Patagonian horses

Cardoso quotes Alcides Mercerat [2]:

"I will just point out the presence of wild or Bagual horses in the Andes. It is a horse that is slightly shorter than the horse that currently lives in the Pampa, and its hide is invariably of the color known as rosillo. From the Indian traditions it seems that this horse has always existed in the Andes and that therefore this animal has never become extinct in American soil."

Rosillo colored horse.

Rosillo. This color is a mixture of red, black and white, where the first two prevail. See the photograph below.

Bagual. The word used by Mercerat, Bagual or Bawal, is not of Spanish origin. According to Cardoso, when the Spaniards resettled Buenos Aires in 1580, they used the native word for "wild horses" which in Spanish are called "Cimarrón" or "alzado" (feral, wild). They adopted the word used by the Querandí natives: Bagüalada as a collective noun and Bawal or Bagual as singular.

The English pronounciation of Bagual is: "Bag- Wall". Which as we will see below is not at all like the word used for horse.

The name given by the native Puelche in the Pampas, the Tehuelche in Northeast, Central and Southern Patagonia and the Mapuche in Chile and Northwestern Patagonia are all very similar: Kahualk, Kaahuel and Kahuwello (in English it would sound something like: "Cow-L-Oh") yet they derive from Bagual even though they sound similar to the Spanish word Caballo (horse) - it sounds, using English pronunciation as follows: "Cab-Al-E-Oh".

However, the Mapuche had a specific non-Spanish-origin word for mares: Auca and wild colts: Caftá. These were used in Prehispanic days. Only after the Spanish conquest did they adopt the word Kahuello to apply it to domesticated horses.

The maths

Cardoso goes on to do the numbers. He takes the 5 mares that were allegedly left behind when Buenos Aires was abandoned. And calculates their offspring.

Each mare has a life expectancy of 20 years, and produces an offspring each after an 11 month pregnancy, with an 80% survival rate and a 50/50 male to female mix. These in turn would reproduce after the age of 3.

The outcome, between 1537 and 1582 yields only 1,580 horses in total. A figure way below the "vast quantity of animals roaming the prairies from the sea to the Andes".

He does another calculation assuming no ponies dying, that the mix of offspring is 3 mares to 2 colts and that they begin to reproduce when they are 2 1/2 years old. This results in: 23.292 animals.

The only way to get vast quantities of horses is by assuming that they were already there in vast quantities: native horses.

More information

Apart from Cardoso, we have some additional information on these "American" horses.

Charles Darwin and George Musters both wrote that Spanish explorer had seen horses at the Strait of Magellan in 1580 and marvelled at how quickly they had dispersed from the River Plate to the tip of the continent. However Drake, was attacked by natives on foot at Puerto Deseado in Central-East Patagonia in 1586.

If the animals came from the North, from Buenos Aires, why were none seen in Central Patagonia yet they were abundant in Southern Patagonia?

An explanation is that they survived the shipwreck of the fleet of the Bishop of Plasencia, which carried horses. This happened in 1526, and only one ship survived, they did not manage to help the castaways and returned to Spain. The survivors were never seen again. Could these horses have survived in Patagonia?

Sources

[1] Anibal Cardoso (1912), Antigüedad del Caballo En El Plata. Anal. Mus. Nac. Bs. As., Serie III t. xv. Marzo 4, 1912. pp 371+ Read the article.

[2] Alcides Mercerat, Un viaje de exploración en la Patagonia Austral.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2012 by Austin Whittall © 

Extant Native American Horses Part II

I will continue with the Second Part of my Previous Post.

A very deep and well documented paper was written on the possible survival of native American horses in Argentina until the mid sixteenth century. Its title "Antigüedad del Caballo En El Plata" (The Antiquity of the Horse in the River Plate), and its author: Anibal Cardoso. [1]

Cardoso tackles the matter from different angles, which I will summarize in this post:

The Source of the horses

According to the orthodox view, when in May 1541 the Spaniards abandoned the first town that they had established on the River Plate (the first Buenos Aires, founded by Pedro de Mendoza in 1536), they left behind 5 mares and 7 horses. They burned the settlement and moved up the Paraná River to Asunción in Paraguay.

They had decided to leave because there was no food and the natives were hostile. Paraguay was warmer, food was plentiful and the natives were peaceful farmers.

Then, in 1580, the settlers in Asunción needing a port on the coast, returned downstream and built a second town (current Buenos Aires). They saw many horses and mares, tall as mountains all along the coast, for 80 leagues (400 km - 250 mi) and inland, up to the Andes.

So, the official version is this: these 12 European horses bred in freedom, roaming the Pampas and in 40 years filled it with hundreds of thousands of wild ponies.

Cardoso disagrees

This account of the "abandoned" horses was written in 1612 by Ruy Díaz de Guzm&aactute;n. But the official accounts written during the settlement of Buenos Aires and the relocation of its inhabitants do not mention it.

Ulrich Shmidl, a German mercenary who came to Argentina with Pedro de Mendoza in 1536 wrote a detailed account of his life in the first Buenos Aires and later on in Asunción. They literally starved to death, they ate rats, snakes, the corpses of executed prisoners, the soles of their shoes, and of course, their horses. Possibly none survived.

When they left for Asunción in 1541 they burned the town to leave nothing to the bellicose Querandi natives. So any surviving horses which were used in combat, would not have been left behind.

They did leave pigs on an island in the River Plate (San Gabriel), and left specific instructions about them. But not one word was written about horses.

The documents at Asunción do not mention horses until the arrival of Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca in 1542. So, none were brought from Buenos Aires. All had been eaten by the starving inhabitants.

Cabeza de Vaca brought 27 horses with him. And they were an expensive item, worth 4,000 gold Reales. A fortune. In 1547 only 26 were still alive. But in 1553, Asunción had 130 horses!. These must have been provided by the natives, in exchange for Spanish goods. The horses were native ones, from the Pampas.

The Horses were local ones

Cardoso says that the Spaniards at Buenos Aires did not see horses in 1536 - 41 because the Querandi hunted horses, so the animals just moved away from the coast, inland. Furthermore, the coastal jungles were home to jaguars which preyed on the horses. This led to very few horses along the coast.

Later, in 1580, the Spaniards returned in force, they repelled the Querandi and advanced inland. That was when the came across the horses, vast quantities of them. Native American horses.

The Spaniards however said that these horses were the offspring of the ones left behind by Mendoza. Why? To avoid paying taxes to the Spanish King.

The Royal Tax Collectors said that the horses belonged to the King as they were part of his domains. But, after going to court, the judge found in 1596 that since they were the descendants of horses brought by Mendoza in 1536, they were not "of the land", but feral horses and therefore exempt of taxation.

The Spaniards knew about the horses from the natives, they knew that they were American horses and not European ones gone wild, they made up the "Mendoza's horses which ran wild" story just to avoid paying taxes.

The natives had never seen a horse and were frightened by them

Not so! says Cardoso. Ulrich Schmidl wrote about a battle between natives and Spaniards. The former used bows and arrows and also Boleadoras, with which they entangled the legs of the horses making them trip and fall.

Boleadoras are basically a rounded stone wrapped in leather to which a long braided cord of leather is tied. The tip of the cord is whirled around the head of the thrower, and released.

One single stone is known as "bola perdida" (lost stone ball) and was used to knock an enemy on the head, killing him. Also to hunt. The stone hit and maimed.

Two or three stones could be tied into a "V" or a "Y" configuration and whirled. The 2 or 3 cords wrapped around the hind quarters of the prey, causing it to fall.

Different stone sizes were used for different prey. Heavy stones were used for large animals, i.e. horses. Light stones for the American rhea (ostrich like) and the guanaco and deer.

The Querandi and the Chilean Araucanian - Mapuche natives fought the Spaniards in bogs, where their horses stuck fast in the mud. They evidently used this technique in the past to hunt native horses; they knew their prey and were not frightened of them.

Physiological similarities between the Argentine Creole horse and the Hippidion

Cardoso cites a Professor Van de Pas, who compared the anatomy of an Argentine Creole breed horse with other modern horses and also prehistoric extinct ones. His findings are surprising:

The Creole horse has its fingers II and IV mor atrophied and the main metatarsals are highly compressed, laterally, and resemble those of the Hippidion which was a South American horse whose fossil remains are found in the Pampas during the megafaunal period.

The image compares the bone structure of a modern European horse, the modern Argentine Creole horse, an ancient Old World fossil horse (Hipparium) and the recent Argentine fossil Hippidion. Notice the similarity between the Creole horse and the Hippidion leg bones and the difference with the European ones! If Creole came from European stock, why would it resemble the native (allegedly extinct) horse?

Comparison of the toes of Modern European horse, Argentine Creole horse and prehistoric horses (Hipparion and Hippidium).

We will carry on with his analysis in our next post.

Sources

[1] Anibal Cardoso (1912), Antigüedad del Caballo En El Plata. Anal. Mus. Nac. Bs. As., Serie III t. xv. Marzo 4, 1912. pp 371+ Read the article.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2013 by Austin Whittall © 

More Evidence on Prehispanic Patagonian horses

 

Cerro Johny, Chile, a piece of Tehuelche painted hide.

During my recent book signing event at the recent "Feria del Libro", I enjoyed browsing some books at the stand of "Patagonia Sur Libros", whose editor, Mario Pazos kindly exhibited my books and gave me the chance to sign books at his stand. As the name suggests (Patagonia Sur = South Patagonia), the books he exhibited and had on sale, of many publishers, some from Patagonia, dealt with the big "P", Patagonia. So I went on a mini buying spree and purchased some hard to get books.

A new book and an interesting piece of information

Among these books was one by Mario Echeverría Baleta about a native mummy found inside a cave by Lake Argentino close to the modern day town of El Calafate (Santa Cruz, Argentina).
Here, during February 1877, Argentine scientist Francisco Pascasio Moreno (aka "Perito" Moreno) while navigating the lake, took shelter on its southern shore and decided to explore the surroundings. He came across the mummy which he took back to the La Plata Museum in Buenos Aires province.

Echeverría Baleta describes the mummy, the caves and gives other interesting information. He also talks about the "Quillango" (key-djan-go) which was the typical Tehuelche native fur cloak. They made it from furs of different animals (skunks, foxes) but they prefered the soft wool of baby guanacos -known as "chulengo". Guanacos are a wild variety of South American camelid, from which the better known llama and alpaca were domesticated.

Quillango, the Tehuelche fur cape

Quillangos were large rectangular pieces, made from many "chulengo" furs sewn together. They were worn with the woolly fur towards the inside, and the leathery part towards the outside. This external leather surface was usually painted with native mottiffs using mineral pigments (yellow, blue, red, ochre, black). Some of these survive and an example is shown below together with some of the colorfull motifs:

Samples of Quillango paintings and a complete Quillango. From [2].

The purpose of these furry chulengo capes was to keep the user nice and warm in the hostile windswept Patagonian steppes. They were wrapped around the body and were far superior to any European garment. Patagonian Pioneers in the late 1800s and early 1900s bought them by the hundreds from the Tehuelche to keep warm.

The Tehuelche also made mortuary Quillangos, shrouds, to wrap the dead, these were made from horse hides. Horses had a special spiritual meaning, as conveyors of the spirit into the afterworld. As with the Mapuche natives of Northern Chilean Patagonia, the Tehuelche used to sacrifice several horses (including the dead person's horse) during the burial ceremonies. These were to assist the deceased in their journey into the afterworld.

The Pali Aike Shroud: Patagonian horses?

The book, while mentioning the mummy and quillangos adds an interesting comment, which I transcribe below (Echeverría Baleta writing in first person):

"I have seen at the Instituto de la Patagonia at Punta Arenas, Chile, a piece of horse hide belonging to a Tehuelche burial found in the region of Pali Aike. It is decorated with beautiful drawings, the main figure being the "karrukeuek" (shapes of a carancho). The dating done in London gives it an age of 450 years BP. There are some errors here. In the first place, the identification. In the report given by the laboratory it says that it is a hide of Lama guanicoe (guanaco). However the guanaco do not have hair but wool and this specific hide has hair and not precisely the color of guanaco's [wool]. Furthermore it is thicker, just like that of horses. And in second place, the chronology. The dating mentioned corresponds approximately to the year 1450, but during that period no horses were known in South America."[1]

It is clear that the radiocarbon dating is correct 450 BP = 1450 C.E., and that the British scientists knowing that there were no horses in Patagonia prior to the discovery of America by Spaniards in 1492 (actually horses arrived in Southern Patagonia in the mid 1700s), assigned the piece of fur to a guanaco.

Echeverría Baleta on the other hand, knowing it is a piece of horse hide, thinks that the age is wrong and should be mor recent.

Both are wrong, and refuse to see what is clear: given Echeverría Baleta's comment on the fact that it is not woolly but hairy and that these hairs a thick and not soft, that the colour is also wrong, I wonder... what if it was a horse, a horse from 1450?

As I have posted before there were probably hoses in Southern Patagonia prior to the arrival of the Saniards. This is some more evidence that buttresses that theory.

I have tried to identify this "Pali Aiken" hide but found nothing, it is not from there, but from another site, close by where in the mid 1970s, a body was found:[2]

• Wearing "a non-tanned Mortuary Cape" (so it would very likely be made from a horse hide).
• It is the oldest known Quillango.
• It was found at Cerro Johny (Johny Hill, yes, with one "n") at the Ranch Estancia Brazo Norte, in Magallanes, Chile, close to the Pali Aike site.
• It shrouded an adult, who was mummified.
• "the design shows certain similarities with those painted on hose hides".
• The body was dated to 1400 - 1500 CE.

Patagonian Horses again

This evidence corroborates Echeverría Baleta's dating and the fact that it may be a horse hide (if the scientists were able to think outside of their mental boxes, they would see things with a clear view: if its design is like those painted on horse hides, it is used for the same purpose tha t a horse hide was used, it looks like one, then, even though it is dated to well before horses were introduced into Patagonia (and America) by the Spanish, then, it is a HORSE!

Some papers which I have not been able to get my hands on yet, were written about this finding, maybe they can shed some light on this issue:

Martinic B., Mateo. 1976 Hallazgo y excavación de una tumba Aónikenk en Cerro Johnny (Brazo Norte) Magallanes. Punta Arenas. An Inst. Pat :95-98,
Jackman, J. 1976 Apéndice I Examen y tratamiento de cueros provenientes de una tumba tehuelche. An Inst. Pat :99-101


Sources

[1] EcheverríaBaleta, Mario , (1995). La Momia del Cerro Gualicho, Cumacú, B. Aires.pp. 31
[2]Caviglia, Sergio, El arte de las mujeres Aónikénk y Gününa Küna - Kay Guaj'enk o Kay Gütrruj (Las Capas Pintadas). Relaciones de la Sociedad Argentina de Antropología XXVII (2002) 2003. B. Aires, pp. 50

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Monstruos de la Patagonia - Criptozoologia, Mitos & leyendas de la Patagonia
Copyright 2009-2012 by Austin Whittall ©

Horse Tracks in Ancient Patagonian Rock Art (which horses?)

 

The image above comes from Natalia Carden [1]. Fig. 10. It depicts: (A) a drawing of an ichnite of an extinct Hippidion sp. measuring 13 x 10 cm, found at Pehuen Có site in Buenos Aires. (B) Modern horse track –without shoe: 12 x 10 cm. (C) the tracks engraved at Alero El Galpón (each track about 10 x 10 cm).

This is another post in my series on the subject of the survival of native American horses until recent historic times. We all know that according to the “official” story, horses originated in America, and moved on towards Asia where they thrived while they became extinct in the Americas during the Late Pleistocene. The New World spent about 10.000 years without horses until the Europeans reintroduced horses after Columbus’ discovery of America in 1492. The horse spread through the Americas at the pace of its Conquistadors and reached the southernmost tip of the continent in the 1700s.

I have read an interesting paper by Natalia Carden (2009)[1], on Patagonian petroglyphs (rock carvings) that depict animal tracks, and, not so surprisingly, also horse tracks.

The image above is from her paper, which I will summarize below:

At Piedra de Museo, Santa Cruz, at the site known as Alero el Galpón (AEG), has several types of prints engraved in rock. Some of hem are cloven (i.e. guanaco prints), but others are definitively representations of one-digit ungulates such as horses.

Their hoofs are nearly circular and have a ‘V’ shaped notch on the rear part. The rocks have imprints that are very naturalistic as can be seen in the image above and image below (A). Other sites in Patagonia display similar designs but slightly more complex (B) and (C) below. Motif (C) has also been interpreted as a Labyrinth.

Comparison of Rock Art motifs by N. Carden [1]

Carden addresses the age of these petroglyphs and the problem they present: rock engravings are Holocene and date from about 4,000 to 2,000 B.P. At the AEG site, the rock has been dated to middle/late Holocene some 7,400 years B.P.

Both lines of evidence, according to Carden would mean that the rocks are far too old to represent modern Old World horses brought by the Europeans and too young to represent Hippidion saldiasi New World horses, as these became extinct several thousands of years earlier (11 to 10,000 years B.P).

To explain how / why the Patagonian Paleo-Indians depicted extinct horse hoofs, engraving them in stone, Carden discusses the issue in diachronic terms: the prints were painted from memory, and re-signified by these natives who had never seen them.

Drawings like (B) and (C) are deformed due to this “re-signification”. The “memory” mentioned above is apparently a “mythical history”, and the horses are symbols of a mysterious past and reinterpreted. She puts forward as evidence the fact that “... the presence of Pleistocene bone remains in Holocene layers from the Patagonian and Pampean regions implies that fossils were collected by humans[...] and probably reinterpreted and imbued with symbolic meanings” [2].

She adds that the site may have been a good hunting ground and that the track petroglyphs are part of the mythical symbology of the “place”.

A very neat theory, well documented which fits nicely into the official view of Patagonian prehistory.

However, I am not constrained by Academia and can allow myself to be less cautious and fling some wild theories into the open: what if... the Pleistocene bone remains found in Holocene layers actually belonged to “Pleistocene” animals who survived well into the Holocene, and when they died, laid their remains in those Holocene layers without any human hands placing them there (perhaps we humans helped them pass away with our spears and arrows).
The theory that our distant ancestors dug up megafaunal fossils and gathered them in assemblies is a bit far-fetched. The simple answer is that the native American horses were alive and kicking at that time.

And, they were depicted from nature in the rocks.

Sources

[1] Carden, Natalia. (2009), Prints on the Rocks: a study of the track representations from Piedra Museo Locality (Southern Patagonia), Rock Art Research 2009- Volume 26, Number 1, pp.

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Monstruos de la Patagonia - Criptozoologia, Mitos & leyendas de la Patagonia
Copyright 2009-2012 by Austin Whittall ©

Cryptid on Phoenician - Tehuelche carving

 
A cryptid on a Tehuelche engraved stone with Phoenician symbols.
 
See Index on all my posts on Phoenicians in America.
 

Stone with an engraving of a Patagonian cryptid (and some Phoenician characters).
Is it a guanaco (left), wolf (center) or horse (right)? Copyright © 2011 by Austin Whittall

The strange "engraved stones" of Patagonia, which are unlike any other artistic expression of the Patagonian natives, besides having odd symbols that seem to be of Semitic (i.e. Phoenician or even Hebrew letters) origin, also depict animals. Some stones portray snakes (we will post on them separately, from a cryptozoological point of view) which I have already dealt with from a historical point of view (celtic or phoenician intertwined snakes)

The image shown above is form one of the stones from the Museo Salesiano at Rawson, Chubut, Argentina.

The stone, is a round boulder, which has several engravings. In its central part, a mammal, of unknown origin. Just above it, three symbols or letters. Above right an arrow head and below it, a geometric fringe or border with triangles.

This is not the usual native style, as already mentioned (Genuine Tehuelche inscribed stones), and all these "Phoenicians in Patagonia" posts aim at trying to validate if they are genuine, and if so, are they native or made by ancient Mediterranean mariners.

The Cryptid

The animal is shown sideways, only one fore leg and one back leg are depicted. It has a triangular shaped head with upright ears. Its legs are short in comparison to its body, and its tail is also short and bulky.

The local fauna, includes pumas (which as the engraving is definitively not a feline, we will discard), foxes (the animal seems dog-like), and guanacos.

I have included, just because the creature also has a horse-like air, an image of a Trapan (a rare Eurasian wild horse), officially there were no native horses in Patagonia until the arrival of the Europeans who brought horses with them to America, however I have posted elsewhere about the possible survival of prehistoric native American horses, so I decided to include one, just in case. (Also see: Patagonian donkeys)

I also included a wolf (nowadays there are no wolves in Patagona, and the maned wolf has long legs, so it is not the animal portrayed on the stone), because it may be a representation of an "Andean Wolf", another Patagonian cryptid.

In my opinion, the animal is some kind of canid. It may be an Andean Wolf, or even a variety of "warrah" (Falkland Islands / Malvinas fox-wolf).

The stone was apparently found in Chubut province, in the northern part of Patagonia. It is unusual for the Tehuelche to depict a dog. They usually painted guanaco or hunters, as well as pumas of feline looking animals. I have not seen any dog - wolf - fox in their rock paintings. So, this is indeed a very peculiar stone which differs from the standard native artistic expression.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia

2011 International Year of Forests Copyright 2009-2011 by Austin Whittall ©