(CNN)The unexpected discovery of a 16th-century horse tooth in modern-day Haiti lends credence to ancient folklore. sexuality has been introduced. Origin of wild horses on islands off the coast of Maryland and Virginia.
Nicholas Delsol, a postdoctoral researcher at the Florida Museum of Natural History, explores 16th-century archaeological sites to understand the introduction of domesticated cattle to the Americas during Spanish colonial times. I was researching cow bones. He performed his DNA sequencing of a "huge collection of archaeological artifacts" in his real, early Spanish town of Puerto, in modern-day Haiti. This town was founded by the Spaniards in 1507, but was abandoned in 1578.
Archaeological site of Puerto Real, his one of the first Spanish cities founded in the Americas One.
"One of the bones he thought was from a cow was misidentified," his Mr. Delsol explained in his CNN interview. "The small tooth fragment was actually (from) a horse."
The discovery was "completely unexpected," Del Sol said. "We quickly realized that it was the first domestic horse genome from the early colonies of America." "It confirms what we can expect from historical documents, saying they most likely came by ship from the southern Iberian Peninsula," Del Sol said. , said it was so important that Spanish colonists brought horses on their grueling and logistically challenging journeys across the Atlantic. It also helped identify the Chincoteague pony, the closest extant relative of the domesticated horses of Genetic similarities lend credence to the belief that ponies descended from early Spanish horses, says Delsol. It could indicate the authenticity behind this legend," he said.
But just because wild ponies likely descended from Spanish horses doesn't mean they came from shipwrecks, the researchers noted.
"The Spaniards may have left them on the islands and bred them to feed the local livestock, just like other species such as pigs and cattle," he explained.
The find also provides more evidence of how far northern Spanish settlers in the Americas reached.
"Although not widely known, some studies indicate that the Spaniards existed not only in the Caribbean, Mexico, and South America, but also in the far north. We were looking for options on the East Coast of the United States in the mid-Atlantic region," Delsol said. "We have some evidence of a Spanish presence, a Spanish expedition into the interior of the Carolina." We want to explore how early settlers relied on horses for cattle grazing in the Americas.
