Читать книгу The Majesty of the Horse: An Illustrated History - Tamsin Pickeral - Страница 10

HEIGHT

Up to 13.2 h.h.

APPEARANCE

A heavy head with a convex profile and long ears that angle slightly to the outside. Short neck, deep chest, flat withers, and a long back with a sloping croup. Shoulders are well conformed and sloping, and legs are long, fine, and notably strong.

COLOR

A primitive dun or grullo, with a dorsal stripe, black lower legs, and often zebra markings.

APTITUDE

Riding, light draft

THE PREHISTORIC CAVE PAINTINGS in Lascaux, France, depict, with astonishing detail, two very different types of horse. One type strongly reflects the characteristics of the Asiatic Wild Horse (Przewalski); the other type, seen in a striking procession of three fine-limbed, elegant horses, bears much in common with another of history’s important breeds, the Tarpan.

The Tarpan (Russian for “wild horse”) occupies a central role in the development of horse breeds and is widely considered to be a closer relative to the modern horse than the Przewalski. Despite their physical differences, the two breeds have occasionally been confused, primarily because both wild horses roamed across a slightly similar area. The Tarpan spread across western Russia and throughout Eastern Europe and formed the basis for the chariot-driving stock of ancient cultures, from the Greeks to the Egyptians, Assyrians, Scythians, and Hittites. The prepotency of its influence can be seen particularly in the light horse breeds of Eastern Europe and Eurasia, whereas the Przewalski’s influence spread through Central Asia, down into China, and east to Japan. In particular, the Tarpan can be connected to the magnificent but diminutive Caspian horse, though perhaps of greater significance is the link believed to exist at a founding level between the Tarpan and the desert breeds of Central Asia, and possibly even the Arabian. In Europe, the Tarpan’s influence can clearly be seen in the Portuguese Sorraia—which in turn formed the basis for the majestic Iberian breeds—and in the Romanian Hucul and Polish Konik.

The Konik is the closest descendant of the Tarpan, to which it bears a strong physical resemblance. In fact, it is largely to the Konik that the modern-day Tarpan owes its existence. Like the Przewalski, the Tarpan in its pure form was hunted to extinction—the last wild Tarpan was accidentally killed in 1879 during a capture attempt, and the last Tarpan in captivity died in a Russian zoo in 1909. Several attempts have been made to breed a reconstituted Tarpan, including one by the Polish government, which established breeding herds from stock that most closely resembled the Tarpan. These herds were primarily made up of Konik ponies, and in 1936 Polish professor Tadeusz Vetulani used these Koniks to establish a program to try to re-create the Tarpan. Around the same time, Berlin Zoo director Lutz Heck and Heinz Heck of the Munich Zoo also began a breeding regimen using Konik, Icelandic, and Gotland mares with a Przewalski stallion. Eventually a fixed type of Tarpan physicality was established, with the horses referred to as Heck horses. A Heck stallion and two mares were imported to the United States in the 1950s, where they now have a dedicated following. A further horse of Tarpan characteristics, the Hegardt, was developed in the United States by Harry Hegardt (and previously Gordon Stroebel) based on crossing Mustangs with Tarpan-like ponies, also probably of Konik descent.

Despite the Tarpan’s importance, it was not actually recorded and described until around 1768, when German naturalist Samuel Gottlieb Gmelin (1744–74) captured four of the wild horses in Russia. He provided a detailed account of its appearance, which was further recorded in a drawing of a Tarpan colt in 1841. In 1912, Helmut Otto Antonius, director of the Scholbrunn Zoological Gardens in Vienna and one of the first scientists to recognize the importance of the Tarpan in the development of modern domestic horse breeds, named the Tarpan Equus caballus gmelini in recognition of Gmelin’s description; now the breed’s correct scientific name is accepted as Equus ferus ferus.