A team at the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, has discovered that nearly all today’s horses* trace tail-male back to Arabian and Turkoman stallions brought to Europe over the last seven centuries (yes, pre-thoroughbred). There is so little diversity in domestic horses’ Y chromosomes that it took an advance in research methods to be able …
Continue reading “The Daddies of Them All: How Arab and Turkoman Stallions Dominate the Gene Pool”
He rode an Arab horse That King Darius had sent him. […] You could not name the price of this horse, Because he was so swift, and knew how to spin on his heels. His back was two colours: On one side he was white as an ermine, On the other, black as a mulberry. …
Habitually in company with mankind, all the Arabian breeds become exceedingly gentle and intelligent; a look or a gesture is sufficient to make them stop, take up with their teeth the rider’s jereed [a spear or javelin] or any other object he may have dropped, stand by him if he has fallen off their backs, …
Continue reading “The Arabian Horse’s Intelligence, a Description from 1841”
Thank you to Slaminsky for pointing me towards these scents for the wealthy and horse crazy. Parfums de Marly present a range of equine-themed perfumes: Godolphin: “opulent rose note, leading to a woody-leather scent base. Top notes: thyme, saffron, cypress, green notes, fruity notes and mate. Heart: rose, iris and jasmine. Base: leather, vetiver, cedar, …
Yay! The British Museum are going to have live horses in the forecourt this Saturday to celebrate their The Horse from Ancient Arabia to Royal Ascot exhibit. I felt pretty iffy about the exhibit for various reasons (detailed here – it’s a wee bit incoherent, inaccurate and slanted), but the Horse Power day sounds like …
How could you fit the history of horses and humans into a space? Not even the British Museum could hold it: it would be crammed like Tutankhamun’s tomb. Selene’s chariot horses on the eastern Parthenon pediment would be eyeball to eyeball with Da Vinci’s triple-life-size Spanish steed. The central atrium would be the tackroom to …
Continue reading “The Horse: from Arabia to Royal Ascot via the British Museum”
Saudi Arabia’s claim to have the oldest evidence for horse domestication took a substantial knock today as Cambridge scientists published the results of an examination of modern domestic horse genes. Their conclusion? Domestication began on the Eurasian Steppes. Their research shows that the extinct wild ancestor of domestic horses, Equus ferus, expanded out of East …
Epona.net is a comprehensive one-stop-shop for all the known sources on the Gallo-Celtic horse goddess, Epona. There’s an on-line shrine complete with funky flute music here. Devon, Maid of Epona has provided a prayer for the goddess here, and ideas for honouring her in ritual here. Jane Badger has an interview with the author of …
Continue reading “If Wishes Were Horses: The Red Horse and the White Mare”
Images of the horses at Wanderreiten im Havelland. This post relates to a chapter of the book If Wishes Were Horses: A Memoir of an Equine Obsession. If you have any questions to ask about the content, please fire away in the comments. The main online index for the book is here.
“[An Arab] is startled at neither lance-flags, swords, firing, nor music, nor any of the bug-bears of English remounts, but he hates a camel* (small blame to him) and mistrusts an elephant. * Oddly enough, English horses have not the same objection to a camel that the Orientals have; in several instances I have observed …
