Joseph Allen writes that within the last two years they have put on display in the Maya room of the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, four horse bones discovered in the caves of Loltun near the Maya ruins of Uxmal in the Yucatan Peninsula. According to the curator of the Maya room, anthropologist Srta. Maria Cardoza, the dating of the bones has not been verified. They were discovered at about the same depth as Mayan pottery fragments which appear to date to the Classic period (A.D. 200 to A.D. 900). When asked the reason for placing the horse bones on display, Cardoza, a full blooded Mayan, matter of factly stated that the museum's objective was to represent the total picture of the ancient Mayan history. She also said that some of her colleagues were testing other kinds of animal markers such as hair that could be DNA tested. There seemed to be no question in her mind about horses existing in Mesoamerica prior to the conquest.
As a personal and cultural note, Allen writes that the traditional status of the horse in Mexico is indeed heart rending. The cost of feeding horses is very expensive, therefore they typically must fend for themselves. During the rainy season they fare pretty well (June-October). However, in the dry season (February to May) they often look like they are nothing but skin and bones. "Having grown up around horses, it is almost more than I can take to see them starving alongside the railroad tracks or the highways." Thus, in theory, all that was needed was a few seasons without rain, sometime between A.D. 29 to A.D. 1500, and horses would have become extinct until reintroduced by the Spaniards. [Joseph L. Allen, "Horses" in The Book of Mormon Archaeological Digest, Vol. II, Issue VI, p. 1] [See the commentary on Enos 1:21; Alma 18:9; Ether 9:19]
3 Nephi 3:22 Horses (Illustration): A Photograph of Horse Bones in the Maya Room of the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. Discovered in the caves of Loltun near the Maya ruins of Uxmal in the Yucatan Peninsula. Found at the same depth as Classic period pottery fragments (A.D. 200 to A.D. 900). [Joseph L. Allen, "Horses" in The Book of Mormon Archaeological Digest, Vol. II, Issue VI, p. 1]
“Horses”
According to John Sorenson, in 1895, Henry C. Mercer went to Yucatan hoping to find the remains of Ice Age man. He visited 29 caves in the hill area--the Puuc--of the peninsula and tried stratigraphic excavation in 10 of them. But the results were confused, and he came away disillusioned. He did find horse bones in three caves (Actun Sayab, Actun Lara, and Chektalen). In terms of their visible characteristics, those bones should have been classified as from the Pleistocene American horse species, then called Equus occidentalis L. However, Mercer decided that since the remains were near the surface, they must actually be from the modern horse, Equs equus, that the Spaniards had brought with them to the New World, and so he reported them as such. In 1947 Robert T. Hatt repeated Mercer's activities. He found within Actun Lara and one other cave more remains of the American horse (in his day it was called Equus conversidens), along with bones of other extinct animals. Hatt recommended that any future work concentrate on Loltun Cave, where abundant animal and cultural remains could be seen.
It took until 1977 before that recommendation bore fruit. Two Mexican archaeologists carried out a project that included complete survey of the complex system of subterranean cavities (made by underground water that had dissolved the subsurface limestone). They also did stratigraphic excavation in areas in the Loltun complex not previously visited. The pits they excavated revealed a sequence of 16 layers, which they numbered from surface downward. Bones of extinct animals (including mammoth) appear in the lowest layers.
Pottery and other cultural materials were found in levels VII and above. But in some of those artifact-bearing strata there were horse bones, even in level II. A radiocarbon date for the beginning of VII turned out to be around 1800 B.C. The pottery fragments above that would place some portions in the range of at least 900-400 B.C. and possibly later. The report on this work concludes with the observation that "something went on here that is still difficult to explain."
The statement was made that paleontologists would not be pleased at the idea that horses survived to such a late date as to be involved with civilized or near-civilized people whose remains are seen in the ceramic-using levels. Some archaeologists have even suggested that the horse bones were stirred upward from lower to higher levels by the action of tunneling rodents, however they admit that this explanation is not easy to accept. [John Sorenson, "Were Ancient Americans Familiar with Real Horses?," in Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, vol. 10, num. 1, 2001, pp. 76-77] [See the commentary on Enos 1:21; Alma 18:9; Ether 9:19]