I’ve just published a chapter called “Inventing the Wild Horse: the Manmade History of the Takhi and Tarpan from 1828–2018” in Horse Breeds and Human Society: Purity, Identity and the Making of the Modern Horse, edited by Kristen Guest and Monica Mattfeld (Routledge, 2020). I went overboard writing this and outstripped my word count so …
Category Archives: Wild Horses
The Beautiful Irony – An Afterword for The Age of the Horse, February 2018
On 23 February 2018 an international group of paleogeneticists and zooarchaeologists studying horse domestication published a report in the journal Science. They had recovered and sequenced DNA from the remains of horses found at the Botai site, hoping, as team-member Ludovico Orlando put it, “to catch evolution red-handed, when domestication first started.” Instead, they turned …
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From Taboo to “Ecoterrorism” – Horsemeat’s Troubled Political History in America
I’ve written something for The Atlantic‘s Object Lessons blog on the long (if potted!) history of horsemeat in America. A much fuller account is on offer in The Age of the Horse! During World War II food shortages, horse meat once again found its way to American tables, but the post-war backlash was rapid. “Horse …
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Trump’s Plan to Turn Mustangs into Meat
The Trump budget cut isn’t well thought through. Firstly, there are no slaughter houses in the US processing horses for meat, and recent attempts to open new abattoirs have resulted in passionate local protests. Secondly, the horses could go to Mexico or Canada, but both countries are obliged to keep horses for six months before …
Mustangs for Your Ears
Deanne Stillman’s Mustang: The Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West came out in 2008 and remains definitive. It takes you from the arrival of the first Conquistadors’ horses – like Pedro de Alvarado’s “bright bay mare” “good both for tilting and to race” and the grey “Bobtail” who was “fast, and had …
Two Wild Horses in St Petersburg
A little nugget on the wild horses featured in The Age of the Horse: St Petersburg, 1900 (I believe): two young Przewalski horses or Takhi captured in Tibet are paraded for curious locals. They are gifts from the Grand Lama to Prince Hespère Ouchtomsky, “confidential friend of the reigning Tsar” and an aficionado of all …
War Horses Week: Invisible Horses
While wild horses in the right environment can blend beautifully into their background, the better to fool predators, it’s another story with domestic horses – especially those pressed into service in battle. The Camoupedia is a blog dedicated to the art of becoming invisible. Fascinatingly, it includes three posts about the camouflaging of horses in …
The Wildest Wild Horse
Thematic Variation in the Przewalski’s Horse
Two pieces that turned up in internet searches within minutes of one another. Firstly, a rather gruelling article about the complications involved in trying to breed Przewalskis and return them to a degree of wildness in China. And secondly, as light relief, an entire site full of chocolate moulds, which includes one for a… Przewalski. …
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Caledonian Mercury, Saturday 5th July 1834 STATUARY, sculptured from the rocks of Caledonia, By Mr FORREST. THIS EXHIBITION is now opened for the season, with an additional EQUESTRIAN GROUPE, from Lord Byron’s Poem of Mazeppa, and describing the fall of MAZEPPA AND THE WILD HORSE. Open from ten o’clock till dusk, int he area of …