Oldest DNA from domesticated American horse lends credence to shipwreck folklore

An abandoned Caribbean colony unearthed centuries after it had been forgotten and a case of mistaken identity in the archaeological record has conspired to rewrite the history of a barrier island off the Virginia and Maryland coasts.

These seemingly unrelated threads were woven together when Nicolas Delsol, a postdoctoral researcher at the Florida Museum of Natural History, set out to analyze ancient DNA recovered from cow bones found in archaeological sites. Delsol wanted to understand how cattle were domesticated in the Americas, and the genetic information preserved in centuries-old teeth held the answer. But they also held a surprise.

“It was a serendipitous finding,” he said. “I was sequencing mitochondrial DNA from fossil cow teeth for my Ph.D. and realized something was very different with one of the specimens when I analyzed the sequences.”

That’s because the specimen in question, a fragment of an adult molar, wasn’t a cow tooth at all but instead once belonged to a horse. According to a study published this Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE, the DNA obtained from the tooth is also the oldest ever sequenced for a domesticated horse from the Americas.  

An unexpected opportunity

The tooth was excavated from one of Spain’s first colonized settlements. Located on the island of Hispaniola, the town of Puerto Real was established in 1507 and served for decades as the last port of call for ships sailing from the Caribbean. But rampant piracy and the rise of illegal trade in the 16th century forced the Spanish to consolidate their power elsewhere on the island, and in 1578, residents were ordered to evacuate Puerto Real. The abandoned town was destroyed the following year by Spanish officials.

The remnants of the once-bustling port were inadvertently rediscovered by a medical missionary named William Hodges in 1975. Archaeological excavations of the site led by Florida Museum distinguished research curator Kathleen Deagan were carried out between 1979 and 1990.

Horse fossils and associated artefacts are incredibly rare at Puerto Real and similar sites from the time period, but cow remains are a common find. According to Delsol, this skewed ratio is primarily due to the way Spanish colonialists valued their livestock.

“Horses were reserved for individuals of high status, and owning one was a sign of prestige,” he said. “There are full-page descriptions of horses in the documents that chronicle the arrival of [Hernán] Cortés in Mexico, demonstrating how important they were to the Spanish.”

In contrast, cows were used as a source of meat and leather, and their bones were regularly discarded in communal waste piles called middens. But one community’s trash is an archaeologist’s treasure, as the refuse from middens often confers the clearest glimpse into what people ate and how they lived.

The specimen’s biggest surprise wasn’t revealed until Delsol compared its DNA with that of modern horses from around the world. Given that the Spanish brought their horses from the Iberian Peninsula in southern Europe, he expected horses still living in that region would be the closest living relatives of the 500-year-old Puerto Real specimen.

Instead, Delsol found its next of kin over 1,000 miles north of Hispaniola, on the island of Assateague off the coast of Maryland and Virginia. Feral horses have roamed freely across the long stretch of a barrier island for hundreds of years, but exactly how they got there has remained a mystery.

Folklore meets science

According to the National Park Service, which manages the northern half of Assateague, the likeliest explanation is that the horses were brought over in the 1600s by English colonists from the mainland in an attempt to evade livestock taxes and fencing laws.

Others believe the feral herds descended from horses that survived the shipwreck of a Spanish galleon and swam to shore, a theory popularized in the 1947 children’s novel “Misty of Chincoteague.” The book was later adapted to film, helping spread the shipwreck legend to an even wider audience.

Until now, there has been little evidence to support either theory. Proponents of the shipwreck theory claim it would be unlikely that English colonists would lose track of valuable livestock, while those in favor of an English origin of the herds point to the lack of sunken vessels nearby and the omission of feral horses in historical records of the region.

The results of the DNA analysis, however, unequivocally point to Spanish explorers as being the likeliest source of the horses on Assateague, Delsol explained.

“It’s not widely reported in the historical literature, but the Spanish were exploring this area of the mid-Atlantic pretty early on in the 16th century. The early colonial literature is often patchy and not completely thorough. Just because they don’t mention the horses doesn’t mean they weren’t there.”

The feral herds on Assateague weren’t the only horses to revert back to their wild heritage after arriving in the Americas. Colonists from all over Europe brought with them horses of various breeds and pedigrees, some of which bucked their bonds and escaped into the surrounding countryside.

Today, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management estimates there are roughly 86,000 wild horses across the country, most of which are located in western states, such as Nevada and Utah.

Delsol hopes that future ancient DNA studies will help decode the complex history of equine introductions and migrations that occurred over the last several centuries and offer a clearer understanding of today’s diversity of wild and domesticated horses.

The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE.

Ice Age Footprints Uncovered in Utah

Human footprints believed to date from the end of the last ice age have been discovered on the salt flats of the Air Force’s Utah Testing and Training Range (UTTR) by Cornell researcher Thomas Urban in forthcoming research.

Urban and Daron Duke, of Far Western Anthropological Research Group, were driving to an archaeological hearth site at UTTR when Urban spotted what appeared to be “ghost tracks” – tracks that appear suddenly for a short time when moisture conditions are right, and then disappear again.

Stopping to look, Urban immediately identified what to him was a familiar sight: unshod human footprints, similar to those he has investigated at White Sands National Park, including the earliest known human footprints in the Americas.

“It was a truly serendipitous find,” said Urban, a research scientist in the College of Arts and Sciences and with the Cornell Tree Ring Laboratory.

The researchers returned to the site the next day and began documenting the prints, with Urban conducting a ground-penetrating radar survey of one of the two visible trackways.

Since he previously refined the application of geophysical methods, including radar, for imaging footprints at White Sands, Urban was able to quickly identify what was hidden.

“As was the case at White Sands, the visible ghost tracks were just part of the story,” Urban said. “We detected many more invisible prints by radar.”

Duke excavated a subset of the prints, confirming that they were barefoot and that there were additional unseen prints. Altogether, 88 footprints were documented, including both adults and children, offering insight into family life in the time of the Pleistocene.

“Based on excavations of several prints, we’ve found evidence of adults with children from about five to 12 years of age leaving bare footprints,” Duke said in an Air Force press release. “People appear to have been walking in shallow water, the sand rapidly infilling their print behind them – much as you might experience on a beach – but under the sand was a layer of mud that kept the print intact after infilling.”

Since there haven’t been any wetland conditions in at least 10,000 years that could have produced such footprint trails in this remote area of the Great Salt Lake Desert, Duke said, the prints are likely more than 12,000 years old.

Additional research is being done to confirm the discovery.

“We found so much more than we bargained for,” Anya Kitterman, the Air Force Cultural Resource Manager for the area, said in a statement.

Urban was working at the request of Duke, who had previously found two open-air hearths in the UTTR dated to the end of the Ice Age. At one of these hearth sites, Duke found the earliest evidence of human tobacco use. Those hearths were about a half-mile from the newly discovered footprints.

The site has broader significance, according to Urban. “We have long wondered whether other sites like White Sands were out there and whether ground-penetrating radar would be effective for imaging footprints at locations other than White Sands since it was a very novel application of the technology,” he said. “The answer to both questions is ‘yes.’”

While the Utah site is not as old and may not be as extensive as White Sands, Urban said there might be much more to be found.

Graves at Williamsburg’s First Baptist Church Will Be Excavated

Descendants, archaeologists and researchers alike gathered Monday for the long-awaited beginning of burial excavations at the original First Baptist Church site.

The First Baptist Church descendant community unanimously voted in March to begin excavating three grave shafts in order to learn the race, age, sex and anything else about the people buried on the site. Since archaeologists began digging in September 2020, the original foundation of the church, a structure dating to 1865 and 41 graves have been identified.

Members of several congregations who are descendants of early Williamsburg residents gathered to view the opening of the graves. The ancestral blessing ceremony that was performed before the work began included a mix of prayers and song — a solemn and moving moment, said Connie Matthews Harshaw, president of the Let Freedom Ring Foundation. The group has been working since 2018 to preserve the church, its history and artefacts that date to the 18th century.

“My heart is full. It was a moving tribute this morning. The day was all about the descendants,” Harshaw said. “We wanted the descendants to have an opportunity to voice what their ancestors may be thinking or saying.”

The 41 burial sites, which are rectangular holes about two feet wide and five feet deep, have been primarily identified because of their surface appearance, according to The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. One of the chosen graves was marked by an upside-down wine bottle, making it the only marked grave identified so far.

The process will take about two months. It will include confirming the presence of human remains, determining how long they’ve been there and assessing if the conditions permit further testing. If conditions allow, osteological and DNA testing will be done on the remains.

DNA testing will determine the eye colour, skin tone, propensity for certain diseases or conditions, genetic ancestry and biological connections of the person.

The osteological analysis can fill in some gaps of the DNA testing by examining the bones — age at death, stature, injuries, illnesses, physical stresses, quality of life and place of origin.

The DNA testing will require two samples from each subject and removing bone for that testing. The bones will then be fully excavated and moved to the Institute for Historical Biology on William & Mary’s campus for cleaning and analysis. Any artefacts found in the graves will be cleaned and catalogued in Colonial Williamsburg’s archaeological library.

The osteological and DNA analyses will take six months to a year. After the testing is done, all remains and artefacts will be reinterred in the original site. Then finally, hopefully, the descendants will have their answers.

“It has to be heartening for the descendant community because if you think about it, these people have laid there for more than 66 years under a parking lot at first, unrecognized,” Harshaw said. “If you stand still in the moment and think about the fact that what this means for the descendant community and their involvement in this process, this is really an example for the nation to follow in what we call community archaeology.”

The testing will allow researchers to establish a connection between the buried and the First Baptist Church and possibly help descendants find their ancestors’ final burial place.

“Every step of this process has been descendant-driven. … It wasn’t a decision for [Colonial Williamsburg]. It was not a decision for Let Freedom Ring. It wasn’t a decision for the church,” Harshaw said.

“It was the descendant community that will drive what happens on this site, with this site, how it’s interpreted because that’s the right thing to do.”

A Rock With Mastodon Carving Discovered At The Underwater Stonehenge Of Lake Michigan

Another incredible discovery has been made as researchers have found a rock with a carving of a Mastodon at the underwater Stonehenge of Lake Michigan. In 2007, at a depth of twelve meters, researchers found a peculiar set of aligned stones that are believed to be over 10,000 years old.

While searching for shipwrecks, archaeologists from Northwestern Michigan College came across something interesting at the bottom of Lake Michigan.

Mysteriously aligned rocks which were placed there by human beings before the area was covered with water. When the discovery was made, researchers couldn’t believe what they were seeing. It’s America’s Stonehenge.

According to researchers, the stones located at the bottom of Lake Michigan all measure the same distance across, something that wouldn’t be present if we were looking at a natural formation.

The rock formation found at the bottom of Lake Michigan resembles other structures found in England and France, and even those at Nabta Playa, making it very unlikely to be a natural formation.

As if the mysterious rock formation wasn’t enough, after a diving expedition to look at the stones, underwater photographer Chris Doyle found a mysterious stone with an incredible depiction: A Mastodon. This means that the carving must have been made way before the Mastodons were extinct.

The Mastodon rock is perhaps one of the most incredible features of the underwater Stonehenge. Researchers speculate that the rock is made out of granite, a very hard material.

For people to carve something onto this rock, they had to use a tool harder than granite. So the logical question is: What could ancient mankind have used 10.000 years ago to carve something onto a granite rock?

Researchers stress that the marks and lines that make out the mastodon figure were precisely carved, the lines were not just “scratched” onto the rock.

The incredible rock formation and the precisely aligned stone circles clearly indicate a man-made structure. The areas around Michigan are witnesses of early human presence in the American continent which is believed to date back over 25.000 years.

In the distant past, the Lake itself did not exist since an Ice Age ruled over the lands and what is not located at the bottom of one of the five Great Lakes of North America, was located on dry land.

The man responsible for this incredible underwater discovery is Mark Holley, professor of underwater archaeology at Northwestern Michigan College. In 2007, he searched for shipwrecks but found, 12 meters below the surface a series of stones arranged in a circle.

Adding to this amazing discovery is a relatively large rock which has, on its surface a depiction of a mastodon, an animal that became extinct around 8000 BC.

In the region near Lake Michigan, researchers have previously discovered menhirs and petroglyphs. When the first Europeans arrived in the seventeenth century they found that Michigan had thousands of prehistoric mounds.

Scholars also found “sacred stones” across the geography of the Great Lakes, stones according to the natives were placed by another race who lived there before. Statues and stone idols erected in various parts were discovered weighing over 100 kilograms.

The underwater Stonehenge of Lake Michigan must have been created before the last Ice Age, when the lake bed was dry and that is, according to researchers, over 12.000 years ago, a time that according to history, mankind couldn’t erect such elaborate constructions.

What does this tell us about history? Is this another piece of evidence that points to the fact that history books, as we know them should be re-written? We believe yes.