THE HORSE ON SCENE

The ancestor of the horse was a tiny five-toed animal the size of a fox (called Eohippus) that lived in waterlogged floodplain forests. It first appeared about 60 million years ago in North America. As the climate changed, it evolved and adapted to its environment. In drier forests, it was forced to eat much harder food consisting of leaves and twigs, and later grass, instead of soft fruits and shoots. As it did so, its originally tiny teeth changed to much larger and stronger ones. Because of the change in terrain and way of life, they were left with only one of their original five fingers, the hoof, which was much more durable. Gradually they became larger and more powerful, their fawn colouration changed, their withers became more prominent and later domestic horses acquired an overhanging mane. They became the Equus, meaning horse. Before that, however, it crossed from North America over the so-called land bridges to Asia and on to Europe. Around 10,000 years ago, however, it became completely extinct in the Americas and only returned here with the arrival of settlers from Europe in the 16th century.

Only two direct ancestors of the horse survived the Ice Age. One was the tarpon, which lived until the 1880s. The only surviving wild horse originally found in Mongolia and China is the Przewalski's horse, also known as the kertak. Although it was extirpated from its homeland in the second half of the 1960s, a few individuals survived in zoos. Thanks to Prof. František Bílek, an important Czech hipologist, it was saved.

At the end of the Old Stone Age, prehistoric man hunted horses alongside reindeer, turkeys and mammoths most often for subsistence. Horses were hunted by humans as a source of food as early as around 50,000 BC. Horse hunts were organized. Nomads initially processed only their meat, milk and hides, but soon noticed the strength and endurance of horses and began to use them to carry loads or as beasts of burden to hitch to skids on which they carried loads. Only later did they use horses for riding. It was not until more than 4000 BC that Asian nomadic tribes living north of the Caucasus in the area between the Don and Volga river basins began to breed wild horses. From there they spread throughout Eurasia over several centuries.