From the first a well-bred foal in the fields lifts a higher pace and plants a lighter limb; he dares to advance in front . . . and starts not at vain noises : his are a high crest and fine head, a short belly and fleshy back, and a breast rippling in proud slopes of muscle . . . a double ridge runs between his loins, and his hoof of solid horn prints the sod with heavy clatter . . .

— Virgil,  Georgics

So did this horse excel a common one,

In shape, in courage, colour, pace and bone.

Round-hoof’d, short-jointed, fetlocks shag and long,

Broad breast, full eye, small head, and nostril wide,

High crest, short ears, straight legs and passing strong,

Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide:

Look what a horse should have he did not lack,

Save a proud rider on so proud a back.

Shakespeare,  Venus and Adonis

What did the ancestors of our domestic horses look like?

Apart from fossil remains, we have the cave paintings found in various part of Western Europe, mainly in Spain and Southern France. The horses shown in these paintings vary in type; they mostly bear a strong resemblance to the modern Przewalskii’s horse, but we should not take this to mean that all horses of that era looked alike. Even at that time, there were probably great variations in type in all areas where horses flourished.

At this period the horses found in Central Europe were quite small in size, and do not seem to have been as plentiful as they later were in Eastern Europe. Around 20,000 years ago the climate was extremely cold, but between 16,000 and 13,000 BP it started to improve. By the time they were domesticated, horses had generally increased in size and quality, possibly as a result of the improvement in climate and consequently of living conditions. The evidence available to date suggests that they were first domesticated in the grassy plains of Ukraine and Southern Russia, approximately 6,000 years ago. Horses were not plentiful as yet, but before long they became more common. At the village of Dereivka, near Kremenchug in Ukraine, more than 2,000 horse bones have been found.

From these and other finds a great deal has been learned about the domestic horses of the Copper Age. Domestication did not affect horses to anything like the extent it did other domestic species. Dogs, sheep, cattle, goats, pigs etc. all underwent considerable changes in appearance following domestication. Not so horses; the only way we can tell whether a horse skeleton found in a Copper Age settlement was domesticated or not, is by reference to accompanying archaeological evidence. The exception is tooth wear: evidence of bitting have been found on the teeth of a stallion found at Dereivka, suggesting that even at this early date, well before wheeled vehicles were in use, horses were already being ridden.

The earliest domesticated horses obviously differed in no respect from wild horses. From the skeletal evidence found at various sites, we can deduce that early domesticated horses in the Copper Age were generally between 137 cm (13.2hh.) and 150 cm (14.3hh.) - a very respectable size range.

Following domestication a general reduction in size seems to have occurred. This happened with most domesticated species, and may be the result of unskilled management – after all, humans were still learning about keeping domestic animals – coupled with poor nutrition. As their keepers gained experience and developed greater skills in caring for domestic animals, a greater range of variety in types and sizes of horse appeared. By the Bronze Age horses were found in all sizes, from less than 112 cm (11 hh.), to around 152 cm (15 hh.).

A Hittite chariot (courtesy of Steven Weingartner)

Tombs from the older Hittite Empire, dating from between the seventeenth and the fourteenth centuries bc, contained the skeletal remains of several horses: adults standing about 145 cm (14.1 hh.) and several smaller horses. Egyptian horses were a fair size, too. A skeleton found at Buhen on the left bank of the Nile near the second cataract, dates to about the seventeenth century bc. It is of a horse of slender build, standing some 150 cm (14.3hh.) at the withers.

In Eastern Europe and Asia the horses of the Iron Age remained at about the same size as they did during the Bronze Age, but in Central Europe the average size became smaller. This may have been due to poor conditions, or it may have been a deliberate policy of breeding for smaller size, as smaller horses may be more docile and easy to manage (although some are not!). However this trend was not universal, and even in Central Europe horses of larger size have been found at Iron Age sites.

Nevertheless, it was not until the Roman era that larger horses became commoner. The Romans, who needed substantial horses for military purposes, liked larger horses, although the types they preferred would not be considered large by today’s standards.

It is tempting to see early evidence of specific breeds in the cave paintings, in the frescoes and bas-reliefs, pottery etc. of the ancient world. However, the concept of a ‘breed’ is a comparatively modern one. The very earliest breeders recognised, of course, that even among stock which looked very similar, there was a great deal of variation; they also recognised that certain characteristics might be passed on from parents to offspring. Although they did not know (as, indeed, nobody did until Gregor Mendel did his famous experiments on strains of peas in the nineteenth century) exactly how these characteristics were transmitted from one generation to another, they were in no doubt that they were transmitted.  By selecting those animals which varied in the direction of the kind of characteristics they were seeking, and then mating those animals with others showing the same kind of variations, breeders over the centuries have been able to change the physical appearance (and to a greater or lesser extent, enhance or diminish certain traits of temperament) of animals of many different domesticated species, and thus create what we now think of as specific breeds, which when mated with others of their kind will breed true, and faithfully reproduce their breed type. Even so, early breeders tended to think in terms of types, rather than breeds. As far as horses were concerned, different types were generally known by the name of the geographical area in which they originated, and in which the characteristics of the type became ‘fixed’ by selective breeding; or else from the region where they were most commonly bred or employed. It was only in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that the idea of closed stud books^[1] really caught on, although of course stud records had been kept in various countries for many centuries before that, and in some countries the breeding of particular types was rigorously controlled (for example among the bedawin of the Arabian Peninsula, among some of the nomad tribes of Central Asia, and by the Carthusian monks of Spain in the fifteenth century).

Even so, certain types had been preferred and selectively bred for throughout historical times, and possibly even before that. There is some evidence, from the so-called Srednii Stog cultures that flourished along the river Dnepr, that already in the Copper Age attempts were being made at selective breeding.

By the second millennium bc the Bronze Age cultures of western Siberia had already started to produce horses of a type that conform more closely to our ideas of a ‘blood’ horse: i.e. a more refined type with good bone but that extra bit of ‘quality’. Augusto Azzaroli suggests that there was some fundamental difference in the hereditary characters of oriental and occidental horses, resulting from mutations that possibly occurred even before domestication. This is quite possible, given recent research into equine DNA, but it remains to be proved. It does seem certain, however, that ‘noble strains’ of horses originated in Central Asia, and that they spread out from there, whether as wild horses or imported by wandering tribes, eventually forming the basis for the numerous strains of Asiatic horses celebrated in ancient times.

These oriental horses were not all alike in type. Some idea of what they looked like may be gained from Egyptian, Hittite and Assyrian bas-reliefs and frescoes, as well as from Greek pottery and from written records. The Egyptians appear to have had horses of refined appearance, bearing a remarkable resemblance in many respects to the modern Arabian; however, that does not entitle us to assume that they were Arabians.

Assyrian bas-reliefs, on the other hand, show an altogether chunkier animal, less refined in appearance, but by no means coarse. The classical Greeks also liked horses of substance; Simon of Athens, writing most probably in the fourth century bc, describes the ideal horse:

… moderate size is best in every animal. I cannot tell a good horse from his colour; however, it seems to me that a mane which is of the same colour throughout and of fine hair is generally the best … the horse must be short above and long below, so that the distance shall be short from the withers to the haunches, but as long as possible from the hind legs to the fore … A good hoof for a horse is the light and handy sort, neither broad nor too high, and having little flesh but thick horn. The sound is also a sign of the good hoof; for the hollow sort has more of the cymbal ring than the full and fleshy. Let him have supple pasterns and no stiffness of the fetlock joints … His chest should be neither too narrow nor too broad, and his shoulder-blade very large and very broad indeed. Let the neck be slender near the jaw, supple, flattened back to the rear, but bending down to the front from the slenderest part. The head should be advanced, and the neck not short. Let him have a high poll, and a head flat-nosed but light; the nostrils should be very large, the jaws slender and a match for each other, the eyes large, very prominent and bright, the ears and teeth small, the jaw as small as possible, and the part between the neck and the jaw very slender. The withers and seat should be very large, the sides very broad and deep, and the loin supple … the haunch very large and broad, the flank very small … Let him hold his tail high, and have it thick at the base and long. This for the shape of the horse.

Roman literature has given us a great deal of information about the different types of horse available in the Roman world. As we have seen, the Romans preferred larger horses, and liked them to have a somewhat rounded outline.^[2] This was because, setting aside horses for everyday purposes, the main use which the Romans had for horses was for war. It has been common to disparage the Romans as horsemen, and to underrate their cavalry. However horsewoman and equestrian author Ann Hyland has done sterling work in researching and testing Roman saddlery, equipment and cavalry manoeuvres, trying them all out on horseback before writing about them. Her findings give one a new respect for the abilities of the Roman cavalryman! For their intricate manoeuvres (many of which would test to the limit today’s Grand Prix dressage riders – and remember, the Romans rode without stirrups!) Roman cavalrymen needed horses which were powerful without being clumsy.

The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius

As Ann Hyland points out, the Roman ideal of equine conformation hardly changed over several centuries. Here is Roman veterinary surgeon Pelagonius, writing in the fourth century ad:

Small head, black eyes, nostrils open, ears short and pricked up; neck flexible and broad without being long; mane thick and falling on the right side; broad and muscular chest, big straight shoulders, muscles sticking out all over the body, sides sloping in, double back, small belly, stones small and alike, flanks broad and drawn in; tail long and not bristly, for this is ugly; legs straight; knee round and small, and not turned in; buttocks and thighs full and muscular; hoofs black, high and hollow, topping off with moderate sized coronets. He should in general be so formed as to be large, high, well set up, of an active look, and round-barrelled in the proportion proper to his length.^[3]

Of course the Romans had access to horses of differing types, including some of the best horses in the world at that time. Among these were horses from Spain, which appear to have been very similar to the modern breeds from the Iberian peninsula. Also much valued were horses from Nesea or Nisea in Persia, and from Numidia (roughly corresponding to modern Algeria), which may well have been the ancestors of the modern Barb.

From the first millennium bc, the horses of Ferghana (in what is now Uzbekistan), and the famous Nesean, were noted for their size, some horses from Ferghana standing (according to the available evidence) about 163 cm (16hh.). However, even in the Roman era, horses tended to be much smaller than that, especially in Western Europe; Roman cavalry horses would average around 142 cm (14 hh.) to 150 cm (14.3hh.), with an upper height limit of about 152 cm (15hh.).

By the ninth and tenth centuries, selective breeding for heavier horses had begun. This trend continued for several centuries, and was made necessary by the adoption of increasingly heavy armour: first of all chain mail, then plate armour. However, we should not imagine anything remotely resembling the lumbering monsters of popular imagination, or indeed anything like our giant modern draught horses. Chain mail is heavy, but a well-proportioned, medium-sized horse of good conformation can carry a chain mail clad man of average size without any difficulty. Plate armour is even heavier but, again, does not require an exceptionally big horse to cope with it. Ann Hyland has taken measurements of late fifteenth and early sixteenth century horse armour at the Royal Armouries. From these measurements she has deduced that the horses who wore such armour (and carried riders similarly clad) were neither extremely tall nor bulky. She believes that the type of horse used would have been something like a heavy hunter, only smaller, perhaps in the range 152-157 cm (15hh-15.2hh.). One of our own horses, Kruger (an Arabian x Belgian Warmblood), at a fraction under 163 cm (16hh.) and powerfully built, would probably have fitted the bill very nicely, as would a horse of the Lombardy type, noted in the fourteenth century for its size, strength and good proportions. ‘Frankish’ (i.e. Western European) horses were regarded by eastern commentators such as Abou Bekr ibn Bedr as clumsy and difficult to manoeuvre; however Abou Bekr attributed this to the Frankish knights’ bad seat on a horse, and considered that their horses could be improved with proper training.

Different from either of these was the horse ridden by the Mongol warriors who in the twelfth century swept into Western Asia, Russia and Europe. Initially they rode shaggy little ponies, of a kind still ridden in Mongolia today; but as they conquered new territories they acquired finer bloodstock, especially from Central and Western Asia. Still, those tough ponies carried them thousands of miles on their journeys of conquest; they were far from beautiful, but their hardiness withstood punishing campaigns  in territories and climates that would have finished off many finder-bred horses.

Although there is little evidence from written medieval records of what the horses generally in use in Europe actually looked like, there are many references to Spanish horses, whose blood permeated that of horses from northern Italy (Lombardy, Tuscany), Sicily and Naples. The Spanish horse, lighter and more agile than the heavier European horses, yet bigger and heavier than oriental types, had been celebrated for centuries; writing in the twelfth century, Giraldus Cambrensis praises the Spanish horses for their handsome appearance, saying that ‘nature reproduces in them the same majestic proportions and incomparable speed.’^[4]

We have rather more written evidence from the Near East, although naturally this pertains to oriental horses rather than occidental ones. The Persian Qabus Nama of Kai Ka’u ibn Iskander, written in 1082, outlines the education of a prince, and describes the kind of horse preferred:

A suitable horse should have a good head, attention being paid to the dentition, special reference being made to avoidance of parrot mouth. The facial plane should be straight, the forehead broad, ears long, fine and erect. The neck should be long with an open gullet, and it should be set on well into the shoulder without coarseness. The barrel should also be fine, with a long underline. The chest should be broad, the loins short-coupled. Limbs should be substantial. Hooves should be black and long, the sole round. The tail should be long with a short dock, and there should be absence of hair on the lower limbs.’^[5]

 By the sixteenth century, Europe had a wide variety of different types. By the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, an increasing variety of horses was becoming available in Europe. In his Perfection of Horsemanship, 1609,  Nicholas Morgan gives the following description of the Great Horse:

a leane slender head, broad forehead, great black eye, full and plain over the lids, slender, thin and lean jaws, broad, thin, long and high-reared neck, the head set on to the neck so naturally as a ramme’s head when he fighteth, high withers, deep broad chest and breast, his ribbes bearing out as the lid of a truncke, with an equal evenness from his chest to his flancke, lean upright pasternes, with a leane deep hoove, somewhat narrow towards the toe.

The Spanish jennet was still regarded as the supreme riding horse, but a number of other types were coming increasingly to the fore. As well as the Spanish horse, Thomas Blundeville mentions, the Barb, the Neapolitan, the Sardinian, the Turkish horse, the Flanders horse (a big, powerful horse, used for draught - one recalls Henry VIII’s alleged comment on first setting eyes on his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves: ‘They have sent me a Flanders mare!’). There was the Irish Hobby; the Swedish horse, not very highly regarded by Blundeville; the German, a very strongly made horse; the Friesland, which has change little since that time, and was then, as now, a strong, compact horse with good legs, of no great height but handy and very useful for the manège; and many others, including the Hungarian, which was no great beauty, having a big Roman-nosed head, a bushy mane and tail, and a very hard trot.

	The Barb (17th century engraving)
The Spanish horse (17th century engraving)

Finally there were the comparatively new types of oriental horse. These had of course been known for centuries, since the Romans, and more latterly the Crusaders, had brought them to western Europe from the East. However there had never been large numbers of them, and certainly very few pure-bred horses. Modern writers tend to assume that early mentions of ‘oriental horses’ refer specifically to Arabians; however, this is not necessarily the case. In the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries an ‘oriental’ horse could mean anything vaguely eastern in origin: a pure-bred Arabian, a Barb, a Turkoman horse from Central Asia (or, more likely, from Turkey or Syria), or a cross-breed combining any of the above. (I have included the Barb in the above, because although strictly speaking the Barb is of African, not ‘oriental’ origin, horses containing Barb blood were often obtained via the Near East).

These ‘oriental’ horses were by no means all of one type. The Turkoman horse, which is a very ancient type indeed, tended to be somewhat rangy; the Barb, by contrast was (and is) a very much more compact type of horse. The pure-bred Arabian, then as now, was also much more compact than the Turkoman horse, although both types shared those characteristics often held to denote the ‘desert’ type of horse: thin skin, fine coat, large open nostrils, fine yet strong limbs, coupled with frugality, great stamina and endurance.

The story of how the Thoroughbred evolved from ‘indigenous’ mares (some of which were Spanish in origin, some probably Barb, and some quite possibly from the vaguely named ‘breed of the North’, a type allied to the Galloway of Scotland, bred in Northern England, and noted for its speed and stamina) crossed with ‘oriental’ sires, is too well known to need repeating. It is enough to remark here that while early eighteenth century paintings depicting hunting scenes still show the old Iberian type of horse, those from later on in the century increasingly show horses we can easily recognise as thoroughbred in type. The Spanish horse and its derivatives was still the horse of parade, but for hunting the ‘English horse’ as it was then known, reigned supreme. On the battlefield the old heavy stamp of cavalry horse was being replaced, in England at least, with the lighter, speedier Thoroughbred; this was not always successful, as Louis Edward Nolan’s scathing comments about the performance of English horses during the Crimean War testify.^[6] In Europe, where the cavalry played a much greater role in warfare, there was a trend towards breeding specific types for cavalry use. Those countries where the light cavalry predominated, such as Poland and Hungary, needed agile, handy horses with a good turn of speed. They made great use of Arabian horses (many of them genuine pure-breds), either captured from the Turks, or imported direct from the desert. Other countries, such as Germany, placed more emphasis on the heavier types of cavalry. By combining the indigenous draught breeds with lighter horses such as the Spanish, Arabian and Thoroughbred, they created the prototypes for the modern Warmbloods, perhaps the most outstanding of these being the East Prussian, now called the Trakehner, from the famous Trakehenen stud where they were first bred in eighteenth century, in the time of Frederick the Great.

After the French Revolution, the old types used in the manège became increasingly rare, as the ‘English horse’ became more fashionable. During the nineteenth century, horses for hunting were almost exclusively of this type. For everyday riding the less well-off made do with whatever was available, while for those aspiring to fashion an elegant-looking hack was de rigeur. This state of affairs continued, in Western Europe at least, more or less up to the First World War.

It has to be said that if photographs are anything to go by, many of these horses would not find favour in modern eyes, a high proportion of them appearing angular and ungracious in form. In particular, some of the horses depicted in Captain Hayes’s famous treatise, The Points of the Horse (first published in 1896) can only be described as hideous, with ill-proportioned bodies, hammer-heads and pronounced ewe-necks. In the 1890s, Wilfrid Blunt, who with his wife Lady Anne founded the famous Crabbet Arabian Stud, remarked of visitors to the Stud that ‘The most hopeless class of visitors are hunting men, whose eye is generally vitiated by a long contemplation of ugliness…’^[7] . Even in the early part of that century, such ill-favoured types appear to have been common, a good example being Jorrocks’s celebrated nag Arterxerxes, depicted in Surtees’s hunting classic Handley Cross (see illustration). However a handsome appearance in a hack was more valued, as Surtees’s other great fictional sporting character, Mr Sponge, knew only too well.

With the increased use of motor vehicles in the first quarter of the twentieth century, fewer people needed horses solely for transport. Although most armies retained a part at least of their cavalry, the latter no longer had any real place in warfare, and increasingly horses were used for sport or recreation. Equestrian competitions, already well established, became more numerous as well as more prestigious. Although the Thoroughbred and its crosses retained supremacy in racing, in the hunting field and in horse trials, gradually the various types of Warmblood began to make their mark in disciplines such as dressage and showjumping. By the 1960s and 1970s they were beginning to dominate the competition scene, as breeders bred selectively for dressage and showjumping, using proven bloodlines and performance-testing to produce stock specifically for those disciplines. In the 1970s, dressage in particular was dominated by the massive, powerful types such as Christine Stückelberger’s famous horse Granat.

Since then, the trend has been to return to less massive, more refined types, but the Warmblood still reigns supreme in showjumping and dressage. In other competitive disciplines a greater variety of breeds may compete successfully. For example, in the growing sport of endurance riding, the Arabian has often been the horse of choice, although a number of other breeds are now beginning to make their mark. For the general, everyday rider, however, the number and variety of different breeds and types available has never been so great. Some of the old breeds have died out, but many new ones have been created. Except in the higher reaches of competitive discipline, where specific breeds or types may have an advantage, horse-owners have an unrivalled array of choices.

Enthusiasm for their favoured breed of horse tends to arouse strong passions in its devotees. The latter tend to feel – and why not? that theirs is the best breed in the world. I shall not quibble with this, except to add that my own favourite breed is the Arabian (which is why my husband and I currently have four pure-breds and two part-breds); however, I hope this does not blind me to the excellence of other breeds.

Where things sometimes get a little out of hand, though, is where devotees of specific breeds not only descend to absurdities in order to ‘prove’ their favoured breed’s excellence, but also get dogmatic about their breed’s origins and antiquity. Arabian horse enthusiasts often state categorically that the Arabian is the oldest and purest of the world’s riding horses. Not so, say lovers of the Iberian horses. The latter are far older than the Arabian. Ah yes, say the Akhal-Teke devotees, but neither is as old or as pure as the Akhal-Teke, which we can prove is in fact the oldest and purest in the world.

In fact, none of these claims really stands up, because the nature of the evidence is so circumstantial and, in many cases, ambiguous. As we have seen, the concept of a ‘breed’ is a comparatively recent one, historically speaking, so the best we can really say is that, according to the evidence, this or that type is a very ancient one. Furthermore, as our knowledge of the genetic make-up of the various breeds of horse grows, it becomes increasingly difficult to define what a ‘pure’ breed actually is!

My own feeling is that, although trying to gain knowledge about the historical origins of a breed and its relationship with other breeds is fascinating in its own right, and well worth pursuing, squabbling over details is not: the latter distracts us from what is really important, which is understanding the qualities of the different breeds and types, in particular how the characteristics of the various breeds fit them for different discipline, and rejoicing in their immense variety.

With that in mind, let’s look at some of the most influential breeds. To find out more about them, just click on the links below:

                                    The Arabian 

The Akhal-Teke 

The Iberians (Andalusians, Lusitanos etc.) 

The Thoroughbred 

Warmbloods

Whether you own – or are thinking of owning – a horse belonging to one of the breeds or types described above, or simply one derived from one or more of them, remember that everything I have said about them consists of generalisations. This is unavoidable, because good representatives of specific breeds are linked by broad similarities, otherwise there would be no point in having distinct breeds. However, we should use these generalisations as guidelines only, never as a means of assuming in advance what our horses’ ultimate capabilities might be. Whatever the latter may be, they are something that can only be assessed by considering each horse as an individual.

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