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| Introduction
- Part 1: The Origin and Relationships of the Mustang, Barb, and Arabian Horse Written by Deb Bennett, Ph.D. © 2004 by Deb Bennett, Ph.D. Horse and Human Come Together An icy wind tosses a skiff of powder-fine snow across frozen ground, swirling in hollow hoofprints freshly made by a band of horses. Snorting softly, the stocky and shaggy beasts bunch together for warmth and protection. So pale a shade of tawny are they that the herd almost vanishes against the mottled background of snow-covered rock and soil. Only the eyes of the most experienced predators would detect them. Yet despite the excellence of their natural camouflage, and despite years of negotiating Siberian terrain and climate, it is difficult for the oldest mare – leader of this little band – to find sure direction in a rising wind that blows all scent away. Uneasy, at last she turns and trots downwind, leading her band to shelter in a thick copse of stunted conifers. The old mare’s sense of unease is well founded, for she knows that there are predators, lovers of horseflesh, lurking everywhere. The most powerful of these predators – one that depends upon her kind for food as much as she herself depends upon the grass – has spread for thousands of miles along the glacial front from Europe to the eastern extreme of the Siberian plains. Penetrating even the frigid, marshy ground that connects the continents, these predators have crossed from Siberia to Alaska, always in pursuit of the horse herds. Twelve thousand years ago lived the most dangerous, savvy, and successful horse-hunters the world has ever known: human beings. The scene shifts; the sky clears with the passing of millennia. The wind still blows, but this wind is like a blast from the mouth of an oven. Now the horses press their hoofs not into snow, but sand. Their fur is no longer shaggy and white but short and fine and glossy, and of a whole palette of earth-tones from rich mahogany, black, and ochre to golden or dappled grey. Their bodies are different too: they are taller, longer and finer of limb. They have slender necks borne with a fine arch, springing upward from withers as prominent and gracefully curving as waves of the sea. No longer do their manes stand naturally erect to serve as brushfulls of hair in the mouths of marauding cats and wolves, but grow long and soft as silken caftans to stream, like their tails, in the wind. But there is one change still more astonishing and significant: these horses are not trying to flee from humans. Instead, they live with us. They even permit us to ride them. They live with us so closely that, by any proper definition, they and we must be considered symbiotes, each species depending upon the other for its welfare and even for its very survival. Our two species, so very different in nature, have become inextricably intertwined. Beginning from the intimate dance of hunter and hunted, we have evolved to that no less significant interpassing of spirit and physical being which distinguishes all horsemanship of high caliber. After a very long courtship of perhaps six thousand years, mankind finally got smart enough to realize that greater benefit would accrue from riding horses than from eating them. So, sometime between four and six thousand years ago, the horse was brought into domestication everywhere it then occurred in the world. There is a spread of dates for the “first” horse domestication, because the horse was tamed not once but repeatedly in different parts of its range. The idea of horse domestication appears to have originated in eastern Europe or the Crimea. Sheep, goats, and cattle had already been kept for some 2,000 years, so the concept of penning, roping, haltering, herding, and overseeing the breeding activities of hoofed animals was hardly new. But the horse – not small or light and among the strongest of all animals for its size – posed some unique difficulties. Whereas sheep, goats and cattle quickly adapted to the herders’ nomadic lifestyle, the horse proved much less tractable and portable. There is another important factor too: the first moment mankind bestrode the horse marked the beginning of modern warfare. The man on horseback became a conqueror who could raid his unmounted neighbor with impunity. Understandably he was slow to trade or gift away this animal that was to him the very embodiment of power and speed. For all these reasons, it was not herds of domesticated horses that spread over the expanse of the Old world, but the ideas and techniques that made their domestication possible. Thus, in contrast to dogs and other hoofed mammals, the horse was domesticated at least four separate times: in eastern Europe and the southwest Russian steppe; in Western Europe; in Iberia; and in North Africa (Fig. 1).
Basic differences between horse breeds stem from the fact of multiple domestication. The horse in the wild varied as all mammal species do, developing subspecies with different body forms – differences that specifically adapted each breeding population to the land and climate of a given geographic region. At one time prior to its domestication, the horse species manifested seven subspecies distributed in both the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. After the two North American subspecies became extinct some 11,500 years ago, five subspecies, whose distribution is shown in Fig. 2, remained. Of these, four (Figs. 1, 4) have significantly contributed to the gene pool of the domestic horse. They are its wild ancestors.
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this site sponsored by The Horse of the Americas Registry, & IRAM - the Institute of Range and the American Mustang email:info@frankhopkins.com |
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