Horses Domesticated in 3,500 BC.

[Minimalist]

Indians did not have horses at all until a couple got away from the Spanish. The Plains tribes used to hunt buffalo on foot.

[Digit]

I'm aware of that Min, but eventually they had lots of horses, which they may well have bred or may, at some time, have captured from the wild stock. What I meant was did they eventually start to selectively breed to 'improve' the stock?
The reason I ask is that I can see no reason to assume that 'improving' the stock can be used as a means of establishing a date for domestication. Logically selective breeding, if adopted at all, would be a later development.

Roy.

[Minimalist]

I simply don't know.

Hernando Cortez is the one who carelessly lost a few horses, c 1535 while exploring northwestern Mexico. To say that the species flourished in north America would be a monumental understatement. Within a couple of hundred years they had spread to the Plains where Lewis and Clark encountered them in 1803. When you think about it, that is an idea traveling far and fast.

It would seem that the Indians got them from wild herds but, once a stock was established, future breeding would be mainly within that stock. I don't know if that constitutes genetic engineering. Further, there is no reason to think that different tribes did not do things in different ways.

Somewhere out there I imagine there is an expert on the issue. I am not it.

[Digit]

I wait with baited breath!
Franly I suspect that 'improvement' would have been a much later event. Here in the UK it only took place when there was a need for it, and with it went the need for grain. If tamed wild stock, which is obviously acclimatised to living on forage, meets your needs why go looking for extra trouble?

Roy.

[kbs2244]

We talked about horses in N A about a year ago over at Ishtar’s Gate.
There is some possible evidence from Virginia Steen McIntyre’s work
of domesticated horses 350,000 years ago in N A

http://www.ishtarsgate.com/phpBB3/viewt ... f=27&t=583

Of course this blows the socks off anyone “respectable.”

[Digit]

Of course this blows the socks off anyone “respectable.”

Well that lets me and Min off for starters!

Roy.

[Minimalist]

"Respectability" is one thing I never worry about.

You know what Mencken said:

No virtuous man -- that is, virtuous in the YMCA sense -- has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony worth hearing, or a book worth reading, and it is highly improbable that the thing has ever been done by a virtuous woman.

[Digit]

Sounds about right to me.

Roy.

[Minimalist]

I've seen that photo before though. Looks like a Rohrschact test to me. Too many extraneous scratches.

[Rokcet Scientist]

Could they have tried to capture a few and keep them alive until slaughtering?

In the 16th and 17th centiuries, square-rigged European sailing ships going around Africa and to the Americas on six-year round trips used to have live pigs, goats, chickens, turtles, and even Dodos on board for fresh meat and eggs. In the absence of fridges. Some even had 1 or 2 cows on board. For fresh milk and meat.

[Minimalist]

Yes, R/S but The Club keeps telling us that the primitives were no where near as smart as we moderns!

[kbs2244]

Always thinking someone may come behind them, or that they may be coming back the same way, those square riggers even dropped off breeding herds on some isles.
Thus the numerous “Pig Island” and “Goat Island” found along some coasts.

Of course, on occasion, the pigs and goats learned to swim.

And I bet they thought they were the first to come up with the idea.

[Rokcet Scientist]

Yes, R/S but The Club keeps telling us that the primitives were no where near as smart as we moderns!

While the difference probably lies much more in that we have much more to build on than they did. They had to start from scratch. Had no examples in their elders (and what they left) like we do. In those days hominids were much more creative and original than we are today. Because they had no choice but to be. We are much more 'copiers' and depend completely on evolution – permanent change/adaptation/development of what is already there, often in fits and starts – to get ahead. While they were much more dependent on 'sparks', true eureka moments, for advancement.

[Rokcet Scientist]

... as the Siberians and Finns were reindeer herders [...]

Uh-uh! The Siberians and the Sami (the people in the north of Finland and Norway, a land called Sapmi, in the Sami language) were. Finns didn't herd reindeer.
And a few Sami and Siberians still herd vast flocks of reindeer today, including the twice annual trek from their winter grounds to the summer grounds, and vice versa. Just like Rowdy Yates

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DkrGv4KVQg