Earthly Equine Evolution

[labelwench]

Earthly Equine Evolution, or the three 'E's, eh?

Rascal, you have a flair for alliteration and an interesting way with words.

Language is far more than a means of direct communication. It may be used to engage, to entertain, or to eviscerate verbally, one's opponent. Not surprising when one considers the origin of this literary device. The following from Wiki, with a link for other readers who may wonder what I am prattling about, lol....

Alliteration is commonly used in many languages, especially in poetry. Alliterative verse was an important ingredient of poetry in Old English and other old Germanic languages such as Old High German, Old Norse, and Old Saxon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliteration

[RascalPuff]

Thank you LW, while, what you compliment me with is much more applicable to yourself, IMHO. HeeHaHo. : )

[RascalPuff]

The Errors Of Voltaire, Gibbon & Clausewitz
European academia characteristically ignores the importance of prehistoric - and 'historically unrecorded' - nomads ('horsepeople' cultures); even understating the 'un-historied' people when In subjective. point: Voltaire, as quoted in A HISTORY OF WARFARE, by John Keegan; remarks with expansive cynicism:

'lf you have no more to tell us, than that one barbarian
succeeded another, on the banks of the Oxus or Xartes
(large Central Asian rivers), what use are you to the public?'
- Voltaire (1694 - 177

Voltaire doesn't call this an edict, but it self-reveals as being just that. He demands that educators give 'the public' a use for barbarians. Nothing less than Voltaire's boldly stated political demand that culture be ignored if it fails to be self-redemptive in the light of civilized, political scrutinization. Voltaire doesn't allow for culture here at all.

Clausewitz (ON WAR) makes exactly the same aggressively exclusionary wrong presumption in proclaiming all war to be somehow construable as an 'extension of politics'; in those words: excluding altogether, cultural warfare as a way of life - Clausewitz' omissionary edict.

Neither of these acknowledged, authoritative men ever allots for warfare as a permanent way of life, rather than merely the temporary, politically extended means to a foreseeable end - a presumed resumption of a state of peace: from an ever-possible yet temporarily emerged necessity for war. In the Greco-Roman Empire of European history, that works fairly well; as a summation of the Western man’s 'use' of warfare it is an astute observation worthy of the due credit it's understandably earned.

But: applied furthermore as it is to the characteristic, cultural warfare of the Eastern horsepeople: it is wrongfully and aggressively exclusionary of culturological warfare - raiding, exclusive of trading - as culturological way of life.

On the same page (47, A HISTORY OF WARFARE), Keegan resolves with cooly smoldering restraint:

“Voltaire, in his contemptuous dismissal of the importance of
events on the banks of the Oxus, strikes * Clausewitzean theory a
blow (* 'Warfare is an extension of Political Will'). Military
historians now recognize that the banks of the Oxus are to war-
fare what Westminster is to parliamentary democracy or the
(1789 French Revolutionary storming of the) Bastille to revolutions.

On the banks of the Oxus - the river that separates Central
Asia from Persia and the Middle East - man learned to tame the
horse, to harness It for driving, and eventually to ride it under
a saddle. It was from the *Oxus (* earlier called the 'Amur’;
sometimes optionally spelled as 'Amyr’) that conquerors rode
forth to found 'chariot empires' in China. India and Europe. It
was on the Oxus that the cavalry revolution, one of the two in-
disputable revolutions in war-making, took place. It was across
the Oxus that successive waves of Central Asian conquerors and
despoilers - Huns, Avars, Magyars, Turks & Mongols - broke into
the Western (European) world.

'It was at Samarkand, just north of the Oxus, that *Tamerlane (*1336 - 1405 AD).the most pointlessly destructive (* beyond political or religious will) of the horse chieftains, began his reign of terror (*Often confused with ‘Temujin’,
who was Genghis Khan, although Tamerlane - AKA ‘Timur’ - was a
descendent of Genghis).

The early (*Mohammadan / Islamic) caliphs recruited their slave
soldiers on the Oxus; so too did the 0ttoman sultans. The (suc-
cessfully repelled but alarming) Ottoman (*Turkoman) siege of
Vienna (*Austria), In 1683, threatening the heartland of Christendom, re-
mained the most disruptive military epic in the memories of
Clausewitz' (* 18th century, Napoleonic) contemporaries.

A theory of war that did not take into account the Oxus and all It
stood for was a defective theory. Clausewitz constructed such a
theory, nevertheless, and with calamitous effects'.

- John Keegan, A HISTORY OF WARFARE
p.p. 47 - 48, War In Human History

Edward Gibbon - in 1787 - states in DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, that the barbarian horsepeople will be kept out of post 1360 AD Europe, because of the European technology of gunpowder activated, pyrotechnic projectile throwers such as the cannon...

H.G. Well’s (THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY, 1921) reminds Gibbon that the means (projectile throwing cannon) by which he (Gibbon) states that the barbarian will be repelled from further attacking Europe, were brought to Europe (in the first place) by the Chinese Mongols (in 1238 - 1241 AD - when eastern Europe <Poland, Hungary and East Germany> was completely over-run and conquered by Genghis Khan’s sons. More will be specifically issued on this subject, before this record closes).

Champion Masters Of War
Originating from Central Asia and emanating as mounted cavalry archers - The Masters Of War - galloped Into the world on alI points of the omnidirectionally considered, continental compass rose, out of 'the great ocean of grass’. From 2500 BC, as the Kurgans, Cimmerians, Scythians, Sarmatians, Parthians, Irani Medes, Hsiung-nu, Magyars, White Mongolian Finno-Scythians, Finno-Iranians, Budini, Agathyrsi, Neurians, Geloni, Androphagi, Avars; in 320 BC Alexander the Great: combining Hellenistic chariot warfare and Central Asian horse-archer cavalry tactics with European infantry tactics; the 4th century AD Atilla and Hunnish Mongol hordes; Kao-ku, Uighars, Khirgiz, Hyksos, Alans, Bulgars, Mamluks, Slavs, Khazars, Kara Khitans, Cumans, Bashkirs, Yakkas, Urians, Saxins, Merkits, Naimans, Kanglis, Tatars (AKA, Tartars), Kipchaqs, Karaits, Liao-tun, Finno-Turkomen, Kaitans, Kazaks; 11th & 12th century Ob-Ugrian, Finn-Ugrian / Finno-Muroma / Finn Mordva tribes - all predominantly White Mongolians from the North; Chinese Mongols, Seljuk and Patzinak Turks, the 16th century Tungut-Manchu; Hungarian Hussars, the 17th century Kallud the 18th & 19th century Cossacks and Turko-Mongol Freemen:

all of these tribal - horse culture based - barbarians would sequentially and intermittently sail upon and utilize the Euro-Asian continental 'sea of grass', from 3200 BC, to and beyond the early 5th century AD.; to the final coronation of Genghis Khan - "The Mighty Man-slayer; Emperor Of The Ocean (transcontinental EuroAsian grasslands steppes) And All Mankind (1206 - 1247 AD - His grandson, Kublai Khan, would carry the Mongol - Yuan - Dynasty to the Dragon Throne of China, through 1360 AD, at which time the three generations of Genghis Khan's reign dissolved under the advent of the Ming Dynasty - 1360 to 1911 AD; displaced by the Republic of China.)".

Best regards,
- RP

[labelwench]

Thank you LW, while, what you compliment me with is much more applicable to yourself, IMHO. HeeHaHo. : )

Thank you, kind sir....

Words, at play, can be a wonderful delight, as they challenge us to venture into the right lobe of our brain in search of creative metaphor and rhyme, cadence and time......

Words, as weapons, are deadlier than any other, as the wounding by a word, may be forgiven, yet the scar never completely fades.

Horses have taught me much.

This species has a near photographic memory, with a limited ability to find an understanding of it's experiencing beyond the sensation and memory of such.

Any psychological wound done to a horse, is there for life. Sometimes it can learn to trust another person, yet the 'triggers' ever remain, and 'permanent cures' are few and far between, and more, I would suggest, the result of ever controlled management.

People are not much different from horses in that regard, IMO.

[labelwench]

The article below copied from this link: http://insciences.org/article.php?article_id=3027

The earliest known domesticated horses were both ridden and milked according to a new report published in the March 6, 2009 edition of the journal Science. The findings by an international team of archaeologists could point to the very beginnings of horse domestication and help explain its early impacts on society.

Researchers from Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, Pa., and the universities of Exeter and Bristol in the U.K., uncovered the evidence in Kazakhstan, the world's largest landlocked country situated in Central Asia. Data gathered by archaeologists supports the hypothesis that the horse-rich area in the vast, semi-arid, grassy plains, or steppe zones, east of the Ural Mountains in Northern Kazakhstan, contributed largely to the development of two neighboring cultures, the Botai in north-central Kazakhstan and the Tersek in the west.

"Having a domesticated animal that could be eaten, milked, ridden, used as a pack animal and potentially for haulage would have had a tremendous impact on any society that initiated or adopted horse herds," said Sandra Olsen, curator of anthropology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

Olsen directed several archaeological teams that excavated sites in Kazakhstan from 1994-2002. Her work in the Botai Culture sites of Krasnyi Yar in 2000 and Vasilkovka in 2002 was supported by the National Science Foundation. Her earlier work in the region was supported by National Geographic.

Archaeologists say horse domestication may have begun in Kazakhstan about 5,500 years ago, about 1,000 years earlier than originally thought. Their findings also put horse domestication in Kazakhstan about 2,000 years earlier than that known to have existed in Europe.

The research team used various techniques to discover that horses provided food and milk, to show that domestic horses differed from wild horses from the same region, and to prove that horses were harnessed and possibly ridden in the fourth millennium B.C., in Kazakhstan.

Researchers used a novel method of analyzing residue from fat-soluble lipids found on ancient Botai pottery to find traces of fats from horse milk, leading to the conclusion that people consumed horse milk at the beginning of the Copper Age some 5,500 years ago. Mare's milk is still a staple of consumption in Kazakhstan where it's usually fermented into a slightly alcoholic drink called 'koumiss.'

Additionally, examinations of ancient bone remains showed that horses were similar in shape to Bronze Age domestic horses but different from more ancient wild horses from the same region, suggesting that people selected wild horses for their physical attributes, which were exaggerated through breeding.

"It is quite surprising that the Tersek and Botai horse metacarpals differ significantly," said Olsen. "The Tersek culture and the Botai culture are considered to be the same culture by many archaeologists--they are separated by just two days' ride on horseback, and they're very similar in terms of their material culture. To find there may have been a difference in the sizes of their horses was something that I did not expect."

The team also used a technique to search for 'bit damage' caused by bridling or harnessing horses. Researchers found tell-tale traces of the use of a thong bridle on the gap between the teeth of the lower jaw. A thong bridle is simply a leather thong draped over this gap and knotted under the chin, with the trailing ends acting as the reins. Plains Indians called this a war bridle or racing bridle and it most likely is the type of bridle that was developed first.

"The domestication of horses is known to have had immense social and economic significance, advancing communications, transport, food production and warfare," said the Science paper's lead author, Alan Outram of Exeter. He said the findings are significant because they change "our understanding of how these early societies developed."

Some comparisons can be made to the early horse-herder culture of the Plains Indians in America, but with some important differences. First, American Indians did not go through the process of capturing wild horses, taming them, and breeding them to become more well-mannered.

Instead, when the horse was re-introduced to North America by the Europeans--having evolved in North America, spread to Asia and Europe, before going extinct in the New World about 10,000 years ago--it was fully domesticated. "American Indians had the advantage of receiving an animal that was already selected to be more docile and controllable," said Olsen.

"Although the Plains Indians often had to develop their own tack, harnesses and equipment used for riding, they often saw the bridles and other equipment that the Spaniards and other Europeans had.

"There is no question that there are similarities in the Plains Indian societies and some cultures on the Eurasian steppe that depended heavily on the horse, but we must take care in carrying that analogy too far," Olsen said.

Kokshetau University in Kazakhstan also participated in this study and additional funding was provided by the Natural Environment Research Council and British Academy.

[labelwench]

Airlines grounded, and horses needing shelter from the ash storm, the story of these volcanic eruptions is far from over, IMO. LW

Icelandic horses ride out ash storm

Posted Mon Apr 19, 2010 12:23pm AEST



They come galloping out of the volcanic storm, hooves muffled in the ash, manes flying.

Shutting the last of his 17 horses into an old barn, Ingi Sveinbjoernsson, 56, breathes a sigh of relief.

Only 24 hours earlier he had lost the shaggy Icelandic horses in an ash cloud that turned day into terrifying night, blanketing the wild landscape in glutinous grey mud.

"I went out to fetch them and realised I couldn't see my own hand. That's how dark it was," he said, shaken. "I never imagined anything like it."

The Icelandic horse is something of a national emblem on the north Atlantic island.

About 80,000 live in Iceland, according to the Horse Breeding Association - a horse for every four people in a population of almost 320,000.

Pony-like in size, but immensely sturdy, and crowned with tufty forelocks and thick manes, Icelandic horses are also valuable, a top stallion fetching hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So when Eyjafjoell volcano erupted last week, spewing dust across Europe and debris over southern Iceland, farmers raced their herds to cover.

Four-by-fours pulling horse boxes became a ubiquitous sight on roads leading away from the volcano.

Others were too late. They evacuated their horses only Saturday, when the ash storm was upon them, driving herds sometimes a hundred strong through blizzards of dust.

Still others, like Sigurgeir Ingolfsson, had to wait until a lull Sunday.

Ingolfsson said he made the "incredibly hard decision" to abandon his farm the previous day when the air became hard to breathe.

When he brought the horses in early Sunday they were matted with dust. "You could sense they were happy to come inside," he said.

At Yzta-Baeli farm, within sound of Atlantic waves and in direct line of Eyjafjoell volcano, Mr Sveinbjoernsson and two friends trudged through ash to gather their lost herd.

The spirited little horses pranced and tossed their heads, before cantering toward a corral. From there they were transferred, two by two, into a trailer, then the barn.

The horses' chestnut and honey-coloured hair disguised the ash that had rained on them. The herd's one white horse was streaked in grey and a slap on the rump of any of the beasts sent up puffs of volcanic dust.

Mr Sveinbjoernsson's family friend Ingimundur Vilhjalsson, 65, examined the horses.

A few appeared to have runny eyes, but Mr Vilhjalsson said the extent of ill effects was unclear.

"I think they're OK, but I don't know what they've been eating all that time, so I'm worried," he said.

The extraordinarily resilient animals - exported mostly to Europe for riding and as far as Japan for meat - almost never go indoors.

Postcards and tourist posters portray them as cute, almost vain-looking animals.

But they are as tough as Icelanders themselves, with double coats adapted to resist the fierce north Atlantic weather, five walking gaits, and easy going temperaments to boot.

"What makes the Icelandic pony so unique is its good temper and sure-footedness," Sveinn Steinarsson, south Iceland representative of The Horse Breeding Association, said.

He said the tainted grass is not immediately poisonous, but as fluoride levels rise from the ash, so does the danger.

"In areas where there's ash fall and horses are outside the conditions are terrible. They can't survive in this if it carries on too long. The horses have to be fed with hay and have access to running water to avoid them consuming a lot of ash."

Mr Vilhjalsson said he thought Iceland's volcano horses would survive.

"Because they're so small, their strength constantly surprises people," he said.

What he couldn't tell was how long these brave animals, usually scornful of home comforts, would be cooped up in the barn.

"I don't know," Mr Vilhjalsson said. "The volcano will decide.

[RascalPuff]

Thank you very much, LW - you inspired me to ferret this out... : )

A Short History of the Icelandic Horse

The Icelandic Pony (aka Icelandic Horse) didn't start out as it's own breed, but resulted from a mixture or cross-breeding of different types of horses / ponies.

The Icelandic Horse (Icelandic Pony) is, most likely, a product of a combination of several European pony breeds. Tracing the exact ancestoral lines of the Icelandic Pony may not be entirely possible, but we can assume that the original stock were probably from the British Isles and Norway.

The British Isles and Norway have several breeds of ponies including: Connemara Pony, Dales Pony, Dartmoor Pony, Eriskay Pony, Exmoor Pony, Fell Pony, New Forest Pony, Shetland Pony, Welsh Pony, Highland Pony, Nordland (aka Lyngshest) Pony, and Fjord Pony.

The pony breeds from these areas are fairly similar, being short and stocky, acclimated for colder temperatures, with short extremeties (including ears) and heavy winter coats. Some of these pony breeds may be descendants of the Celtic Pony which was native to those areas at the time.

The Vikings colonized Iceland around 900 AD. The ponies that were taken with them had to be small enough to fit in their boats, which were open, to make it from one continent to another. A low center of gravity was probably a plus for the trip, and may have kept some horses from falling overboard.

Possibly the boats included the Fjord pony and a group of ponies from the Lotofen Islands. Additional later settlers from other areas such as Scotland, the Orkneys, or Shetland brought their own ponies.

Some resources indicate that there may have been Mongolian blood involved in the creation of the Icelandic Pony, along with Fjord and Tarpan. These have blended into one breed, but various types and sizes can still be seen. Some of the Icelandic Ponies are gaited; some are not.

There has been molecular biology research on the genetic relations between horse breeds in Norway. One research project dealt with four Norwegian horse breeds, the Dales, Fjord, Norwegian trotter and the Nordland / Lyngen; and included two British breeds, an English racehorse, an English Standardbred, a Shetland pony, and a Mongolian horse.

The comparison described above showed that the Shetland pony and the Icelandic horse are closely related, and both more related to the Nordland / Lyngen horse than to any breed in the study.

For the past 1000 years, the resultant pony has been isolated on the island from any further mixed breeding.

There was quite a limited gene pool, much more so since the 1783 volcanic eruption that killed approximately 10,000 people and about 3/4 of the island's livestock, in addition to devastating the vegetation. Deaths were caused by volcanic haze (cloud of volcanic gases and particles), contaminated vegetation and water, and famine.

As the grasses withered, and then started to recover, much of the livestock would not even eat the new growth, actually dying of starvation. Some were poisoned by the fluorine, some may have gotten "tedra teeth" which is brittleness caused by the ash, resulting in inability to effectively masticate. Heavy ash can also lead to bone development problems.

The most moderate calculation indicates a number of 19,488 horse deaths due to the volcanic eruption. That would have left about 7,000, throughout the island, therefore the last 200 years have had little opportunity for expanding the genetic pool. Considering the pocketed areas of settlements, proximation would have further limited the gene pool. (Google public domain)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/icelandic_horse

http://www.icelandichorse.is/history.htm

Best regards,
- RP

[labelwench]

You are most thorough in your research, RascalPuff. The links you included are excellent.

I have had some small experience with the breed, as one of my former patrons purchased an Icelandic gelding, him being just started under saddle, and then boarded the pony with me for two years, while I continued his training in readiness for their daughter, who meanwhile took lessons both with my schooled horses and in learning to be the mistress or better horse in her relationship with her gelding.

The breed is an easy keeper, and I learned another fact about male horses that first Christmas Day, when the pony was acting colicky, and such can be fatal to a horse. Large animal vets are a rare commodity in these parts, so it fell to me to examine the horse. He was a bit shy about having his personal parts inspected, but that was where the problem lay. Horses will excrete fat in their urine, and the weather had been very cold, making the pony reluctant to drop, with the result that he had a waxy buildup in his sheath which was now impeding urine flow.

The horse was uncooperative.

I was adamant about his welfare, he being one of my charges.

Gentle training and reward were unsuccessful and the weather still -40.

The end result was that I knee-hobbled one front leg, and when he was still flashing feet, I pulled the other front leg up with a rope, forcing him to kneel on the front and keep the rear feet planted while I gave him a most personal cleaning.

We both survived the indignity and that resolved the matter, and the rest of that winter and the next, I took prophylactic measures. Most of my own horses are mares and their personal care is simpler. In the wild, horses perform a number of mutual grooming processes and many of the health concerns that we must guard against or treat today are a result of our well intentioned, and sometimes misplaced, equine management practices.

The closer to natural the diet and living conditions of the horse, the healthier they tend to remain.

There may well be another lesson there for our kind......

[RascalPuff]

Dear LabelWench:
Sort of expect that you may already be familiar with Veterinarian, Dr. James Herriott's '*All Creatures Great & Small'. ('All Things Bright & Beautiful', 'All Things Warm & Wonderful', 'The Lord God Made them All') - *it is the first of a seriatim of books that Dr. Herriott wrote about his adventuresome - and often entertaining as well as educational - experiences as an animal physician, in England. Your description of experiences with healing animals certainly reminds me of those books. If you haven't read them, I suggest that you do, for reasons which are self evident.

I gotta tell you that although my wife is a retired school teacher, she also once owned an Arabian horse ranch where she had her own stock and boarded and cared for some that sometimes belonged to others. She is a graduate education and biology major and at one time was a recognized contributor to technical issues in the equestrian trade magazines and publications. Your medical mentality and existential perspective regarding your work is much appreciated.

Best regards,
- RP

[labelwench]

Ah, yes, the works of James Harriott, I borrowed from our local library to see me through some of the winters before the inter-net age, and I believe I have one of his works in my personal library, which surprisingly does contain works other than those pertaining to horses, lol.

The Arabian horse is a marvelous breed, and there are a few even this far north, although they do require greater protection from the elements. I have always admired their beauty, intelligence and endurance, and lived I in a milder climate, they would be my breed of choice. Your wife has impressive credentials and excellent taste in horses.

I am off to tend Madelaine, before putting her in the barn, as she is now at 321 days, and her shape is changing as her due date approaches. I expect she should still be a couple of weeks prior to foaling, but I have no experience with this breed, and this is her first, so no history to draw upon. Now, it is a waiting game.......I do hope for a filly, lol....