[ti:Study: Horses Were in American West by Early 1600s] [by:www.51voa.com] [00:00.00]更多听力请访问51VOA.COM [00:00.04]A new study suggests [00:02.28]that horses were present [00:04.52]in the American West by the early 1600s. [00:09.52]That is earlier [00:11.68]than most written histories have estimated. [00:15.04]The new finding came [00:17.48]from examinations of horse bones [00:20.56]gathered from museums [00:22.68]across the central Great Plains [00:25.64]and northern Rocky Mountain areas of the U.S. [00:31.16]The study's estimate supports [00:33.92]spoken histories of several Native American groups. [00:39.08]The groups say their communities [00:42.40]kept horses of Spanish origin [00:45.40]before Europeans physically arrived [00:48.68]in their homelands. [00:50.52]A study describing the findings recently appeared [00:55.64]in the publication Science. [00:58.28]More than 80 co-writers took part in the study, [01:02.84]including archaeologists, [01:05.52]geneticists and historians. [01:09.04]The team also included scientists [01:12.64]from the Lakota, Comanche [01:15.24]and Pawnee Native American nations. [01:19.16]Past research suggests [01:22.52]that the ancestors of modern horses [01:26.16]first appeared in North America [01:28.96]millions of years ago. [01:31.16]That is before horses [01:34.04]arrived on the central plains of Europe and Asia, [01:38.52]where they were domesticated. [01:40.76]But those early horse ancestors [01:44.36]disappeared from North America [01:47.08]about 6,000 years ago. [01:50.36]In the new study, scientists examined [01:54.44]more than 20 sets of horse remains [01:57.96]from sites in several U.S. states. [02:01.48]They aimed to establish that horses were ridden [02:06.08]and raised by Indigenous groups [02:09.40]by the early 1600s. [02:12.08]William Taylor is an archaeologist [02:16.20]at the University of Colorado at Boulder [02:19.48]and was one of the writers of the study. [02:23.20]He told The Associated Press (AP), [02:26.68]"Almost every aspect [02:28.92]of the human-horse relationship [02:31.64]is manifest in the skeleton in some way." [02:36.40]The study suggests [02:38.80]the horses were present in the American West [02:42.60]and Southwest many years before [02:46.20]the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. [02:49.60]That revolt involved allied Indigenous groups [02:55.16]pushing Spanish colonizers out of New Mexico. [03:00.80]The fleeing armies [03:02.68]left behind many horses and other animals. [03:06.72]The study says historical records [03:10.32]incorrectly identified that moment [03:13.48]as the entrance of the horse into the cultures [03:17.64]of Indigenous groups in North America. [03:21.08]"Now we can wave [03:23.12]goodbye to the Pueblo Revolt [03:25.72]as an explanation for the spread of the horse [03:29.76]into the American West," said Peter Mitchell. [03:34.04]He is an archaeologist [03:36.28]at Britain's Oxford University. [03:39.36]He was not involved in the study. [03:42.28]Indigenous groups [03:44.52]have long disputed this timeline. [03:47.60]This is because spoken histories of many groups [03:52.64]suggested they had seen horses [03:55.72]before meeting Europeans. [03:58.76]Jimmy Arterberry is a co-writer of the study [04:03.12]and a historian with the Comanche [04:06.28]Native American nation [04:08.36]in Medicine Park, Oklahoma. [04:11.00]He told the AP [04:13.32]that multiple spoken histories [04:16.28]state that Indigenous groups [04:19.28]first saw horses [04:21.44]that had either run away from Spanish camps [04:25.04]or been traded through tribal networks. [04:28.84]"We have always known [04:31.24]and said that we came across horses [04:34.48]before we came across the Spanish," Arterberry said. [04:39.72]Yvette Running Horse Collin [04:42.92]is one of the writers of the study. [04:45.60]She is an evolutionary geneticist [04:49.56]at the Center for Anthropobiology [04:53.00]and Genomics of Toulouse in France. [04:57.00]She is also a member [04:59.08]of the Oglala Lakota Nation. [05:02.44]Collin said the findings show that [05:05.92]the spoken histories and traditions [05:09.20]of Indigenous peoples [05:11.00]can be useful in understanding the past. [05:15.04]"Our cultures have been so misrepresented [05:19.08]for so long," she said. [05:21.64]"Too often history has been told [05:24.92]around us, without us." [05:27.56]More than 70 years ago, [05:30.76]archaeologists took artifacts [05:33.68]from burials and ceremonial sites [05:36.76]without asking Native peoples in the area. [05:40.56]The study was started by Lakota researchers. [05:45.12]Some consider it one step in repairing mistrust [05:50.28]between Indigenous groups and archaeologists. [05:54.68]The study also suggests that, [05:58.32]over time, the genetics of horses in North America [06:03.20]went from being mainly of Spanish origin [06:06.88]to a mixture of British and Spanish. [06:10.52]I'm Bryan Lynn. 更多听力请访问51VOA.COM