426 THE ORIGIN OF THE LIBYAN HORSE [CH. 



largely based on the fact that all interbreed with fertility. 

 But, as I have already pointed out, this is no criterion, since 

 animals which are regarded as distinct species, such as the dog, 

 wolf, and jackal amongst carnivores, and the common ox, the 

 zebu, and grunting yak amongst herbivores, also interbreed and 

 produce fertile offspring 1 . As I have shown that M. Sanson's 

 E. c. africanus, which he supposed to be a primeval stock of 

 North-east Africa, has no historical basis, the Dongola breed, 

 on which he principally based his argument, being merely a 

 cross-bred animal of comparatively recent date, we must there- 

 fore look elsewhere for the source of the Libyan horse. As it is 

 found among the Libyan tribes from the dawn of history, it is 

 obvious that it was either developed from the ordinary horses 

 of Asia and Europe, which they had obtained already domesti- 

 cated, or else it was an indigenous species which had reached 

 Africa either through Asia or through Asia and Europe, and 

 had been there highly specialised by its peculiar environment, 

 and domesticated by the Libyans themselves. The first alter- 

 native seems very improbable, since we have traced Libyans 

 with chariots and horses up to a period almost contemporary 

 with the first appearance of the horse on Egyptian monuments, 

 and we have presented reasons for believing that the Egyptians, 

 who admittedly borrowed the horse and the chariot from some 

 other people or peoples, were using Libyan chariots about 

 1400 B.C., that they do not appear to have had the horse 

 much before 1500 B.C., and that along with the light chariot 

 with four-spoked wheels they had obtained the horse from the 

 Libyans (p. 227). 



We have seen that by Homeric days it was a general belief 

 in Greece that the swiftest horses came from the Western Ocean, 

 and that horses of a bay colour the ever constant livery of the 

 Libyan horse and its derivatives were already known in Asia 



1 Report by C. W. Campbell, H.M. Consul at Wuchow, On a Journey in 

 Mongolia, Jan. 1904, p. 36: "The yak (Bos grunniens), here (Mongolia) called 

 sarlik, is kept in the place of cattle to a considerable extent throughout the 

 mountainous parts of North Mongolia. Hybrids of the yak and ordinary cattle 

 are common, and their milk is much esteemed." See also Blanford, Indian 

 Mammalia, p. 491. 



