ABSTRACT
Two authentic wild horses were established by nineteenth-century European scientists: the Tarpan of the western Eurasian steppe and the Takhi or Przewalski horse of the east and Central Asia. Pre-Enlightenment accounts from both Europe and Asia are scant: the horses had little symbolic or economic relevance. The development of biosciences increased interest, augmented by Romantic, post-Darwinian, and nationalistic notions about the special purity and strength of “wildness.” The recent discovery that Takhi have a different number of chromosomes to domestic equines has been touted as final proof that they have been preserved intact since their depiction on cave walls. However, forthcoming research proposes that the Takhi was once domesticated. There is also no proof that the Tarpan was not simply feral. This chapter addresses the following question: are the wildest of horses, for all their narratives of survival, purity and authenticity, manmade after all?
