The discovery of fossilized human footprints in White Sands New Mexico dating to 23,000 years ago is revolutionary for a lot of reasons and one really important one is that it thoroughly obliterates the settler colonial notion that the indigenous peoples of the America’s never had extensive contact with horses prior to the introduction of domesticated feral populations descended from the horses that came over with the Spanish in the 1400′s. It’s currently believed that horses went extinct in North America between 12,000 and 11,000 years ago which gives us an at least ten thousand year window where humans and horses coexisted in North America.
If you want to hear about this incredible archaeological evidence from someone who isn’t white (you should) here’s an excellent article that both talks about the discovery itself and the colonialist way in which it’s been framed by news sources so far.
