| Handout 3 The Origin of the Horse |
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. . . The history of the land bridge area (the Bering Strait) has been one of successive submergences and emergences. During the former periods (submergences) the Old and New World developed independently and divergently. During the latter (periods of emergence), biological revolutions swept both worlds, as life forms native to one, foreign to the other, crossed over into virgin territory. It is probable that these cross-migrations usually affected the New World more profoundly than the Old, because the latter, being periods of separation and isolation. But America, too, developed unique and long-lived life forms. The modern camel and horse, for instance, are North American in origin. The camels migrated west to become the dromedaries and Bactrian camels of Asia and Africa, and south to become the llamas of Peru. The horses trotted along with them into Asia and thence to Africa and Europe. Both animals disappeared in their homeland, the last of them dying the latter millennia of the last epoch of the Cenozoic, the Pleistocene. The demise of the horse and camel in North America is part of one of the most important mysterious chapters of the last million years.
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Adapted by Roy R. Pellicano, BHSO, from Alfred W. Crosby, Jr., The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492, (1972) p. 18.
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