Indigenous people already raised horses in Argentina in the 16th century – 12/19/2023 – Science

Bones found at an archaeological site in southern Argentina indicate that the region’s indigenous people quickly incorporated horses of European origin into their lifestyle. They started raising animals — and, probably, riding them — more than a century before the first written records of this activity in the area, and shortly after the arrival of horses in the country.

The analysis, published in a recent edition of the specialized journal Science Advances, brings important clues about the transformations brought about by the introduction of horses in South America during the colonial era, reinforcing the idea that the indigenous groups themselves soon realized the economic and even military potential of the animals.

“There was, on the part of hunters on our continent, a rapid learning on how to use the horse and incorporate it into their economies and worldviews, as well as the transmission of this knowledge”, he explained to Sheet Juan Bautista Belardi, from the National University of Southern Patagonia. Belardi signed the new study together with William Timothy Taylor, from the University of Colorado in Boulder (USA), and colleagues from Argentina and other countries.

The international team analyzed bones and artifacts found at the Chorrillo Grande 1 archaeological site, near the Gallegos River and Argentina’s southern border with Chile. The colonization of Argentine Patagonia by the Spanish occurred well after their arrival in the regions of the country closest to Brazil, and the first written reports about indigenous people on horseback in the region only appeared in 1741.

As early as the 19th century, native groups such as the Aonik’enk (also known as Tehuelche) and the Gününa Kuna (or Puelche) became famous as ranch hands who used horses to control their own herds of cattle and to hunt guanacos (wild relatives of the llamas) and emus.

One of the debates among archaeologists and historians is how and when this “equine culture” developed in South America and elsewhere on the continent. Until the end of the Ice Age, around 10 thousand years ago, there were native species of equines in American territory — both horses themselves and animals of the genus Hippidionwhich resembled donkeys.

After the disappearance of these species, perhaps due to a combination of climate change and the effects of hunting, horses would only trot again on American soil with the arrival of Europeans. In many cases, such as in the invasion of the Aztec Empire and the Inca Empire, the Spanish used them as a “secret weapon” against indigenous armies. In other places, however, failed colonization attempts had the side effect of equines escaping or animals being abandoned in the wild.

This is what happened after the founding of Buenos Aires, in 1536. The first settlement founded there had to be abandoned a few years later due to lack of resources and conflicts with the local indigenous people, and the colonists’ cattle and equine livestock ran out, in part, breaking away from them. Decades later, when the Spanish returned to the region of the current Argentine capital, there was already a large population of feral horses (descendants of domestic animals that returned to the wild) in the surrounding pampas.

It is believed that these and other stray horses gave rise to the herds later created by the indigenous people. The study carried out in Patagonia analyzed bones from these horses, dated them using the carbon-14 method (the most used in relatively recent samples of organic matter) and also examined their DNA. The team also studied the organic material found in ceramic containers, used by the ancient inhabitants of Chorrillo Grande 1 for cooking.

The carbon-14 data, obtained from bones from the front and back legs and an equine tooth, indicate that at least one of the animals there died before the year 1700. Other dates from the site, obtained from Cooked organic material and a guanaco bone hunted by indigenous people were used to create a statistical model of occupation at the site. The result is a period that goes from the end of the 16th century to 1650 – well before, therefore, the colonizers’ initial contact with the native Patagonian horsemen.

The characteristics of the bones indicate the presence of at least three individuals of the species (at least one adult horse, aged between 6 and 10 years, and two juveniles, aged between one and a half and three and a half years). Two of the animals were female, according to DNA.

Chemical analyzes of the bones indicated that horses grew up in the region. Ultimately, the organic remains in the pottery most closely match the fats and proteins typical of guanaco meat, but the fractures and burn marks on the horse bones suggest they may also have been used as food.

“Based on the evidence we see at Chorrillo Grande, we can’t say for sure that people were riding these horses, but it seems quite likely that they were breeding them, because of factors such as the prevalence of younger animals there,” explains Taylor . “Raising horses, even just to consume their meat, requires a lot of mobility, because they are very strong, aloof and difficult to control. I think it is very likely that these ancient horse breeders in Patagonia were also horsemen.”

According to the researchers, both the environment and the culture of the region’s hunter-gatherers facilitated the adoption of horse breeding in their way of life – something that was repeated in similar contexts among the Guaicuru (ancestors of the current Kadiwéu) in the Pantanal and Grandes North American plains, for example.

“My suspicion is that factors such as life in open grassy environments, highly mobile life and the pre-existence of ecological or cultural relationships with large animals would have predisposed some people to relationships with horses,” says Taylor. “These environments are ideal spaces for the ecological needs of horses: large flat expanses, pasture and water”, adds Belardi.