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These horses are of smaller build and because of this fact, are often referred to as ponies. This, of course, doesn’t quite coincide with the description of the northern horse. The Nordic horse cropped up fairly suddenly as domesticated in prehistoric times, not only in Northern Europe, but in the southern and central parts of the continent as well. Due to the fact the skeletons of these horses were excavated in areas occupied by Gauls in medieval era, Ewart named this group of Nordic horses “Celtic Pony”. G. J. Caesar mentioned these horses in his writings about the Gaul Wars, in which he expressed his amazement at the size of the horses that the Brits were breeding and even began using in war-wagons/chariots. |
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Antonius
considered this wild form of the horse as the Nordic
group of a smaller Pliocene
horse Equus Gracilis Ewart. Stegman considered the Nordic
ponies as a smaller branch of the western horse, which he commonly called
the “mountain horse”. Hilzheimer assumed that a small form of the
western horse lived in the Diluvium simultaneously with kertag,
tarpan
and the larger form of the western
horse. It was only in the last ice age that the steppes overgrew with
forests and as a consequence, this smaller horse was pushed out into the
mountains. Whether this form of horse is a mixture of tarpan or kertag
with the western horse or a simple dwarfed version of the western horse
cannot be proven. This is due to the fact that the chronological
analysis of the diluvium
horse is not overly convincing. From the chronological perspective, there
was simply not enough research done concerning this northern horse and as
a result, the phylogeny
of the characteristic Nordic group of horses is the least conclusive. The
possibility is not excluded that these horses may be a “crossbreed”
between kertag
and tarpan
or a kertag and some dwarfed version of the
western
horse. The oldest form of these horses today are represented in the Exmoor Pony and the Shetland pony. Edited by R.A. March, 2004
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Translated by
Ludvik K Stanek a.k.a.
Lee Stanek
from the 1953 Special Zoo-Technique - Breeding of Horses
Published in 1953 by
the Czechoslovakian Academy of Agricultural Science and certified by the
Ministry of Agriculture.
Written by: MVDr Ludvik
Ambroz, Frabtisek Bilek, MVDr Karel Blazek, Ing. Jaromir Dusek, Ing. Karel
Hartman, Hanus Keil, pro. MVDr Emanuel Kral, Karel Kloubek, Ing. Dr. Frantisek
Lerche, Ing. Dr Vaclav Michal, Ing. Dr Zdenek Munki, Ing. Vladimir Mueller, MVDr
Julius Penicka, pro. MVDr Emil Pribyl, MVDr Lev Richter, prof. Ing. Dr Josef
Rechta, MVDr Karel Sejkora and Ing. Dr Jindrich Steinitz.
