The Origin of the Thoroughbred Horse

Abstract

THE author said that he had shown Academy, January, 1891, (p. 91) that not only, as had been long observed, did the Homeric Greeks drive the horse before they rode him, but that the same was true of all ancient peoples-Egyptians, Canaanites, Assyrians, Aryans of Rig-Veda, Umbrians, Celts-and that the explanation of this was given by Herodotus (v. 9), who, in speaking of the Sigynnæ, the only tribe north of the Danube, whose name he knew, said that they had small horses, with large flat noses and very long hair, which, though not able to carry a man, were excellent under chariots: “wherefore they; used chariots.” Dio Cassius likewise says that the Britons used chariots in war, because their horses were small though active. The description of the horses of the Sigynnse tallies exactly with the abundant remains of the primitive horse of Europe, eaten if great quantities and delineated on antlers by the men of the Stone Age. He was a small animal about 10 hands high with a big head. Even after domestication he remained veryi small, as witness bits of bronze and horn found in Swiss lake dwellings, the shoes found at Silchester, and in camps on the Roman Wall, &c. Authorities are agreed that from this primitive horse has been developed the cart horses of the continent and these islands, whilst our blood horses have come from an eastern stock of slight build and smart appearance. Our problem is to ascertain the original habitat of this superior horse. He has not come from upper Asia; as the Mongolian pony is taken as the type of the coarse thickset horse from which sprang the cart horse. The Mongolian pony probably represents the Scythian horses, which continued to be of a small size down to Strabo's time, and they were derived either from he tarpan or Prezevalsky's horse. The Mongolian pony, though surefooted and enduring, is slow of pace. Neither China, Siam nor Burmah have any indigenous horse answering to the blood horse. India could never breed horses, says Marco Polo, in whose time India was supplied either with Mongolian ponies, from Yunnan or with Arabs from south Persia, Aden and other Arabian ports. These Arabs fetched enormous prices, equivalent to 200l. It has hitherto been universally held that Arabia is the original home of the blood horse. This is a baseless assumption. In the Old Testament, the Arabs are never mentioned as riding anything but camels and asses. Though the author of Job knew of the war horse, yet Job did not own 3. single horse, his equine possessions consisting of 500 she asses. Herodotus (vii. 87) enumerates the nations (including the Libyans) that supplied cavalry to Xerxes' host, but the Arabs only furnish a camel corps. Agatharchides (cited by Strabo) describes the Arabs as camel keepers.