Re: RC: Re: Amblin/Racking/what ever

[CMKSAGEHIL@aol.com]

In a message dated 6/22/00 8:44:14 AM Pacific Daylight Time, dfletche@gte.net 
writes:

<< It seems we have now entered a very speculative area. Not a whole lot of
 hard history. The age of the breed is not the question. It is did the Barb
 (or any of its possible mixed bag of ancesters) branch off from the Arab or
 did it come entirely from another branch(es). Incidently, if the Arab is the
 oldest breed then all horses derived from the Arab and all horses are
 Arabs - having nothing but Arabian ancesters. My guess is the Arabian
 Registry is not going to buy into that. Otherwise, there has to be a
 breed(s) equally as old (possible extinct in pure form - which would imply
 non Arabs are offspring of more than one of this extinct breeds). >>

There are actually four "root" breeds or subspecies, but only two have 
survived as "pure" entities to modern times--the Przewalski (sp?) and the 
Arabian.  The former has not had a great deal of impact on Western breeds, 
but has been used some in Asia.  The two that no longer exist but that make 
up the non-Arab portions of all other modern horse breeds are the Tarpan and 
the Great Forest Horse.  The latter shows up primarily in draft horses and 
ponies, and the former in saddle-type horses.  So no, the other breeds are 
not "pure" Arab in any way, shape or form, but they developed with 
considerable periodic infusion of Arab blood on the "native" horse, which has 
gone on throughout history, either in the form of Arabs or of Barbs.  

Virtually every history I've read has indicated that the Arab was a 
predecessor of the Barb, with the exception of a small number of works--and 
most historians consider those to be "histories" that were rewritten to suit 
a particular author's agenda.  That, unfortunately, happens a lot--not just 
in the field of horses.  For whatever reason, people have wanted to 
disassociate their breeds from their Arab ancestory, and the Barb was a 
convenient way to do so.  (I am reminded of a rather crazy woman who used to 
write for Arab magazines--I made the mistake of saying that a particular 
fault came down through a particular horse, and she got all huffy and wrote 
me a letter stating that no, it did NOT--it was from one of his ancestors!  
This sort of logic is similar to the denial of Arab blood but claiming of 
Barb ancestry...)

I've not been as active with history of horses the past few years, which is 
why I provided Pat Merkle's e-mail addy in a previous post--she can get you 
scores of references on this subject, as this is one of her primary fields of 
study.

Heidi