Horses! Horses Horses Horses!

Shortly after my conversion I spent a lot of time in the military reading the anti literature (or anti-the-church-of-Jesus-Christ-of-Latter-Day-Saints, hereafter referred to simply as "anti") against the church.  I read it all.  I went to a "Christian" bookstore in the mall near the military base I was stationed at and they had a section called "Cults" with all the books against the church and any other faith they considered fringe or apostate.  

I sat down in the corner for weeks and months reading everything they had, with the anti books in my left hand and the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price and King James Bible in my right. 

Every single claim against the church fell into one of three categories (all of which are skewed):

1) Skewed history - mostly rumors, little documented history.

2) Factually incorrect - for example, quotes were made up and attributed to the scriptures - outright lies saying that the church said or taught things it does not / did not teach and I could find it in the scriptures and see it with my own eyes, or quotes from leaders that are just not true.

3) Taken out of context - many things against the church were sensationalized, there was some kernel of truth somewhere in there, but motives or surrounding circumstances were always incorrect. 

I finally put all the books down and stopped reading, informed the store their books were incorrect, but was done researching or giving time to the opposition at that point.  

Ever since then I've noticed that all of the anti literature is a recycling of one of those three themes/methodologies (with a fourth as a subset of #3 - irrelevant minutiae that aren't a central feature to the church's progress and which may be naturally expected in any course of any human events and discarding a big picture) .  

And suffice it to say, on nearly every "controversial" question (controversy is more a matter of a crowd's and public response rather than a basis in fact - to God there are no controversies, that's purely a man-made issue, more a product of group-think and individual incapability) I have found Joseph Smith to have been proven correct over and over again on nearly every point (see following paragraphs).  

Obviously I have my testimony that this is the Lord's restored gospel, and my testimony is not reliant on external facts or evidence beyond what it does for my life and how I hear the Lord, but the external presentation of facts and academia is also important in our world and something we have to be able to account for - or should be able to - in sharing the gospel with our friends and family or even before the world.  

However, there are and were things that I could not account for because either it has not yet been revealed, or we simply do not have enough knowledge, but given his track-record and the answers I have from the Lord these will be undoubtedly proven correct as well in time.  I've put my own questions to rest.  

However, as an academic who has an advanced degree in the social sciences, I am very familiar with epistemology or the study of how-you-know-something and to make a case professionally within the sciences and how to present and prepare for a peer review.  

Labraea tar pit horse skeleton

Most of my profession is about being aware of what you do not know and being able to demonstrate you took it into account - which is what makes so much of the anti literature so concerning; it is not that there is anti literature, but that the anti literature is a symptom and reflection of our own capabilities/incapabilities as a society.  Most of the anti literature takes an absolutist stance and makes no allowance for a difference of opinion, 

All of this brings me to the issue of horses in the Book of Mormon.  Anyone who has been around the church for any length of time has heard this assertion/claim: There were no horses in America before the Spaniards. ALL horses came from the Spaniards.  Anything else is false.  All else is false.  Nothing, no exceptions, no other possibilities. Clearly Joseph Smith made it all up. 

I'm not an expert on horses and I won't pretend to be one here, but I will share what I have recently found and learned. 

1) The story of no-horses-in-the-book-of-Mormon has been around long before I found the gospel a third of a century ago, it's been recycled forever.  

2) The Labraea Tar Pits excavations were discovering horses beginning around 1913 and discovered a type of phehistoric horse that's been believed to be extinct for some time.  

That fact right there has been around - at this point - for more than a century, but has never been considered in any of the literature or introduced should raise serious concerns about our public, academic discourse on this and any other number of subjects.  

The short of it being the epistemological question of: what else do we not know and what has not been publicly shared as a part of the public discourse? (There was also a time when the earth was thought to be the center of the universe and to think otherwise was blasphemy or considered a threat to civil society's order). 

Other things I recently learned/found:  

Cortez only brought 16 horses with him and the Spaniards only brought mares - no males, so no reproduction. 

The Spaniards, including Cortez kept a meticulous inventory of horses because they were the most valuable of their military equipment - humans could be replaced and trained as soldiers easier than horses.  They weren't losing these by any extreme amount.  

Horses also had a lot of difficulty being brought over the ocean.  The earliest record of European horses being brought over was by Cortez about 1519. 

Horses have a very slow reproduction rate.  You can produce one horse ready for breeding - if you're fortunate - in about 3 years at the fastest from pregnancy to being able to mate.  

In Jamestown horses were recorded as being a public nuisance because there were so many - Jamestown began in 1607.  Cortez landed in central Mexico about 80 years prior and ~2,000 miles apart. 

Natives on the west coast (Blackfoot) as having horses as early as 1754, and several native tribes report the horse has been a part of their history for nearly 2,000 years with words for it long pre-dating the Spanish arrival. 

It is simply impossible for all of the horses and historical accounts of them on this entire continent spread as far as they have been to be accounted for as coming from the Spanish in the short time and with the limited numbers that were brought here. 

At any rate, a testimony of the Book of Mormon is not built / cannot be built on horses, the Labraea Tar Pits, or any other trivial matter, but there's a lot that cannot simply be accounted for with our current popular narratives that we use in our society and history that profess to "disprove" the Book of Mormon, or Joseph Smith.  

My own testimony could be summed up with this: 

10 And now, my beloved brethren, and also Jew, and all ye ends of the earth, hearken unto these words and believe in Christ; and if ye believe not in these words believe in Christ. And if ye shall believe in Christ ye will believe in these words, for they are the words of Christ, and he hath given them unto me; and they teach all men that they should do good. (2 Nephi 33:10). 

We have a lot more to discover, but if we're waiting on science and the public discourse for our faith to be justified, I think we're going to be waiting a while and we just don't have that amount of time.  

My suggestion?  If you are at all interested in truth, go study and ask God in the name of Jesus Christ if those things are true and He will manifest the truth of it to you by the power of the Holy Ghost.