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Long - again <sigh>.  I really need to learn to be succinct :(        
Next time :)

D'Arcy Demianoff-Thompson wrote:
> Diane is that, truly, all that you got from the ENTIRE article!  What 
> about the part the "no one really knows" who was the originating equus 
> foundation!"
Hi D'Arcy,

Originally I was going to post something more personal, quoting the 
exchange between you and Kathy, but I decided to go with the simple fact 
that according to the article you cited, our Mustangs descended from 
horses brought to the New World in the middle of the second millennium.

Is that all I gleaned from the article?  No.  Even though I didn't read 
it in its entirety, I was very interested to learn that genetically, the 
present day Tarpan is not necessarily the Real McCoy, that it was 
reverse engineered, if you will.  Also that today's Przewalski Horse is 
"...the result of generations of breedings carefully planned by zoos, 
matings arranged to give the few remaining survivors of the species the 
greatest possible genetic variability" and that, "In 1968, the last 
documented native Przewalski was observed in the wild".  It was 
fascinating to learn that in our country, passenger pigeons, which 
numbered in the billions, that's BILLIONS, "...were wiped out in only 
fifty years".  John James "Audubon, in 1913, observed a flock of more 
than a billion."  This last is of course a misprint.  It should read "in 
1813" since JJA died in 1851, making it very difficult for him to have 
been recorded as witnessing anything over 60 years later  :)

In light of the semi-current argument about eating horses, it was also 
enlightening to read in the article that vis-a-vis the North American 
horse, "The most widely accepted theory is that man played at least some 
role in their extinction. Mankind first came across the Bering Strait 
land bridge shortly before the horses began to disappear. Coincidence? 
Most scholars think not."  And, "Maybe the horse and the mammoth were 
preferred as a source of meat, as cattle are to North Americans today. 
Maybe they defied [sic] horses, the way Hindus worship cattle, but 
believing that horseflesh must be consumed to bring blessing to the 
tribe. Perhaps they spun legends and myths about horses, and believed 
consuming the meat of the horse would make warriors as strong and fleet 
as a stallion. Or maybe they felt that horses were a pest that should be 
killed and eaten on sight."

Despite a few minor mistakes, this relatively brief article is a fairly 
comprehensive history of the Horse and well worth keeping in one's My 
Documents folder for reference.  Nevertheless, that has nothing to do 
with your implying that our Mustangs are *direct* descendants of the 
original North American horse, which they are not.  What this article 
DOES say is that over a period of about 60 million years, the horses 
that were our Mustangs' ancestors evolved primarily here, traveled 
across the Bering Straight, migrated south and west, also evolved 
differently in different climates, were genetically manipulated by man 
for his own convenience, and were brought back here starting in about 
1400 AD.  That means our Mustangs are descended from the originals to 
the same or a slightly less degree as every other horse on Earth.  But 
directly?  No.

PS:  Whenever one *quotes* another, be accurate.  It is okay for me to 
be wrong but it is not okay for me to misquote someone else so that they 
might appear to support me.  I have found that copying and pasting is an 
excellent way to avoid misrepresenting another's statements.  Snip, yes, 
but only without altering the original meaning of the person quoted.  In 
this regard, I couldn't find anything in the article with the words "no 
one really knows" or "equus foundation".  Where does the author make 
statements containing these exact words?


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