DECRYPTION – A study combining genetics and oral tradition retraces the recent history of equines in the New World.
Does knowledge from oral traditions stand up to the precision of genetics and chemical dating? A study published in the journal Science offers an original approach to a crucial question: that of the arrival of the horse in America. For the first time, representatives of the Lakota people, a tribe of the Sioux group, joined Western scientists to confront the teachings of their oral transmission. « It’s a bridge between two worlds that ignore each other, explains Ludovic Orlando, paleogeneticist at Paul-Sabatier University in Toulouse, coordinator of the study. To be honest, I didn’t know there was an indigenous science. The idea was to combine their tools with ours and I was amazed by the seriousness of their approach. »
« After my 2018 work on horse genetics, Yvette Running Horse contacted me on behalf of the Lakota people, continue the scientist. She had just written a thesis on the link between peoples…
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