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Re: [RC] [RC] natural horse wormers? - Sisu West RanchI know that there are those who disagree with me (I don't think there is any good scientific data, but some folk are not swayed by science), but here goes. In addition I am writing this from memory so I may have a detail or 5 wrong. I will however, stand on the broad outline as being correct:There is good fossil evidence that the horse evolved in North America (Eohippus and the like). They died out in North America sometime around the last ice age. A long time ago, but a blink of evolution's eye. I have not seen an explanation. This did coincide with the arrival of man and the extinction of lots of animals. (Wooly mammoths, saber tooth cats, cave bears etc) Apparently they had spread during one of the ice ages to Asia where they flourished. About 3000 BC some marginal farmers somewhere in or near the Ukraine, domesticated them. Within a few hundred years, they had invented the bit and were the scourge of the surrounding area. The Greeks remembered them in the legend of the Centaurs. Some of these Caucasians even migrated over a pass to Mongolia and then intermarried with the locals. This is the source of the Mongolian horsemen. Studies of mitochondrial DNA show somewhere 21 matriarchal lines of horses. This would point to the addition of mares to domestic horse bands about that number of times. It is interesting that the Arabian horse has all of them. I don't know what this implies about the "purity" of the Arabian horse. Today it is doubtful that there are anywhere in the world free running unowned horses that are not actually escaped domestic and thus feral horses. Some wild bands of Przewalski horse exist. They are genetically distinct from domestic horses and thus true wild horses. There is a program to reintroduce them from captive bred stock into parts of their range. As far as North America. There were exactly zero horses here when European expeditions brought them here. Since possession of horses make such a difference in life style, it only took a couple of hundred years to transform the culture of the plains Indians.
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