# Talk:Chincoteague pony

We need sources here! If the breed reports and the National Geographic article can be properly referenced, that would be awesome. If you're unsure of how to reference them, leave a message here and we can arrange something
ManicParroT 21:20, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

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The way this article is currently written, it does not seem to make it clear that there are two groups of ponies on Assateague that do not intermingle (there is a fence at the state line), that only the Virginia group is referred to as Chincoteague Ponies, and that only the Virginia group is rounded up for Pony Penning.  I am going to make some attempt at clarifying this, but I think additional clarification will still be needed. AtxApril (talk) 18:57, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Please feel free to be bold. This article is one of many equine articles that have unfortunately languished without attention on WP. Please just remember to add references as you go, and make sure your references are reliable. Some breed articles that haven't been quite as neglected, and that you may want to check for ideas on layout, are Haflinger (horse), Suffolk Punch and Banker horse. The last one is probably especially relevant, as it deals with a population of feral horses on the barrier islands. If you have any questions, I'm available here or on my talk page! Dana boomer (talk) 20:50, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
Changes so far work for me.  But do include good footnotes.  If the Maryland herd are not "Chincoteague" ponies, then what are they called? And yes, ask Dana if you need help! (I'm a bit too busy in real life at the moment to be more than the peanut gallery)  She's a great editor with multiple featured articles to her credit!  Montanabw(talk) 06:23, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
According to the NPS source that is cited, the Maryland herd apparently are just known as "Assateague wild horses" and do not have a formal proper name as the Chincoteague Ponies do.  I've revised the description in the opening paragraph to (hopefully) better reflect this.AtxApril (talk) 01:14, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
Hm.  Interesting.  Well, if the people who put in the Maryland material want it restored, I guess we can discuss it again when it happens.  Montanabw(talk) 00:37, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Hey Dana, nice job adding all the great new material.  I did go back in and restore some of my earlier material that got dumped and did a little rearranging of everything. Overall, I hope that my edits to your work were helpful and that I didn't misalign any citations in the process or otherwise screw things up too much.  A couple of my edit summaries may have been a little grumpy-sounding, if so mea culpa.  I threw in some stuff I had researched on Assateague Island, and I also restored some of the stuff that came out of the Maryland side's info.  Quite some time back someone was kind of unhappy that MD wasn't getting a fair shake.  Incidentally, I deleted phrasing that suggested that the population co-arose on both islands.  if we are going to discuss the domesticated ponies on Chincoteague, we'll need some more specific info, as most sources I've seen suggest most of the foundation stock came from the feral animals on Assateague.  Montanabw(talk) 06:10, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
Talk:Chincoteague Pony/GA1

New study, needs additional verification:  http://horsetalk.co.nz/2015/07/27/mystery-solved-assateague-islands-wild-ponies-spanish-origins/#axzz3h6lsYQXH  Montanabw(talk) 23:12, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

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This National Geographic article reports on genetic links between the Chincoteague ponies and horses raised by Spanish settlers in Haiti. Can anybody find an academic source to back this up?

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/famous-chincoteague-ponies-may-actually-descend-from-a-spanish-shipwreck
--Stephen C Wells (talk) 23:36, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

Hey, let me read that article for you, and then google the fine clues:

In a study published today in the journal PLOS One, researchers posit that the tooth belonged to a cousin of the ponies roving Virginia and Maryland's barrier islands.
Importantly, both the Caribbean horse and Chincoteague ponies share an evolutionary lineage that originated in Bronze Age Spain, says study co-author Nicolas Delsol, a zooarchaeologist at the University of Florida.

Hiding in plain sight, the paper is here:
Analysis of the earliest complete mtDNA genome of a Caribbean colonial horse (Equus caballus) from 16th-century Haiti — 27 July 2022; open access

This paper presents the mitochondrial genome of a late 16th century horse from the Spanish colonial site of Puerto Real (northern Haiti).
It represents the earliest complete mitogenome of a post-Columbian domestic horse in the Western Hemisphere offering a unique opportunity to clarify the phylogeographic history of this species in the Americas.
Our data supports the hypothesis of an Iberian origin for this early translocated individual and clarifies its phylogenetic relationship with modern breeds in the Americas.

The paper is also discussed at:
Jerald Pinson ::Oldest DNA from domesticated American horse lends credence to shipwreck folklore — 27 July 2022
From the perspective of Wikipedia, the secondary sources are preferred over the academic paper.
A complete mitogenome is a pretty big deal.  — MaxEnt 00:17, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

I'm no expert on this subject, but the following letter suggests that the proper breed and page title here is Chincoteague pony. 

Proper Names of Animal Breeds — 2010

The only portions of animal breeds that should be capitalized are words that are otherwise proper nouns. Thus, German shepherds, Bernese  mountain dogs, Dalmatians, Labrador retrievers, golden  retrievers, Doberman pinschers, dachshunds, English bulldogs, boxers, Ayrshire cattle, longhorn cattle, thoroughbred horses, Shetland ponies, and so on, are the correct terms. Some are not so obvious and need to be researched, such as cairn terriers and papillons. Cairn refers to a pile of rocks and not a place. Papillon is French for butterfly.

Note also that many inbound links have already adopted "Chincoteague pony" orthography. — MaxEnt 00:26, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

Three or four minor edits after first publication.
I found the following to be a fascinating read: 

Pseudoarchaeological claims of Horses in the Americas — 16 July 2019

In her dissertation, Collin's stated purpose is to "deconstruct the history of the horse in the Americas and its relationship with the Indigenous Peoples". She seems to begin with a conclusion—that there is a "Western science" seeking to "disregard, purposefully exclude, and reconfigure" the traditional knowledge of Native Americans. Ultimately, she'd like to "reconstruct the history of the horse in the Americas in a way that is unbiased and accurate".

...
What she noticeably omits in this literature review are biological, paleontological, and genetic sources of information.
If one has a hypothesis regarding the existence of a mammalian species, one expects these in the literature review.

...
Collin's dissertation cites Ancient Origins, Richard Thornton, and Dell Dowdell, and each of these sources variously or indirectly promote ideas about Native Americans which can be considered racist. 
Dell Dowdell, the creator of nephicode.com, actively promotes the notion that Native Americans are the descendants of white Mormons and he believes the Earth is only as old as one of the cave paintings mentioned earlier in this article.
Conspiracy theorist Richard Thornton publishes pseudoarchaeological claims of Maya settlements in Georgia.
And Ancient Origins is a website that traffics in all manner of fake, fraudulent, and fantastic archaeological news, books, and media for profit. Authors they promote range from racists to general conspiracy theorists.
Coming across any one of these in a dissertation for a PhD should be enough to put all that dissertation's sources in question. There were, perhaps, a dozen or more questionable sources of this caliber.
I'm certainly not categorically opposed to the idea that Equus may have survived the Pleistocene extinction and continues even today. This, I think is a perfectly valid, scientific hypothesis.
But it's one that should be tested using science. Not "Western science". Not through the lens of non-indigenous academia. It should simply be tested with science, a set of methods available to anyone willing to use them regardless of geographic origin, cultural affiliation, or ethnic heritage.

More informally, this thesis is dissected here: 

Charles Steinman :: Does Dr. Yvette Running Horse Collins' theory that there were native American horses alive when Europeans arrived have any serious credibility? — perhaps circa February 2022; specific, original publication date masked by Quora; may they rot in the inner circle of gossip rags until time immemorial

She has sufficient credibility with some people, such as her advisors, that she got a Ph.D. from the University of Alaska on this topic and is now engaged in post-doctoral research.
Other people find her research strained and declare her to have no credibility.
Some of them are highly respected, so their words carry weight, but while some might declare her to have no credibility, they do not speak for everyone.

...
Some people feel that the Spanish must have left them there from their previous explorations, but Spanish explorers had very few horses with them (so few, we even know many of the horse's names!), they took very good care of those precious horses and accounted for them carefully.
They didn't escape to reproduce so this does not seem like a good source for a coastal horse in that time frame.
There were some herds that were growing in Northern and New Mexico, but for those horses to make it to the Pacific is questionable because of the extreme and difficult deserts in the way.
That Spanish horses were not readily available to populate the area may be the reason that when the discovery was reported in the San Diego Union-Tribune, some scientists were quoted that this might be possible evidence of pre-Columbian horses.

Quoted material mildly edited for consistency and to trim clutter. 
{{Who}} added because Wikipedia is far from the worst offender. 
What I actually think about this tempest in a continental teacup is that's it's a harbinger of the continued postmodern siloization of peer review; no matter how ridiculous your thesis document, if you can find a silo of established academics who like the cut of your gibber, you can mint yourself a nice, eternal PhD. 
At maximal scale, should things continue along these lines, this eventually becomes an existential threat to Wikipedia itself: ongoing silo wars would have no consensual bottom even for the basic Wikipedia synopsis. — MaxEnt 01:02, 31 July 2022 (UTC)