154 THE HORSE AND ITS RELATIVES 



referred to will be applicable ; and if the Arabs had 

 these wild horses in their midst from Prehistoric time 

 it is difficult to see why they did not domesticate 

 them till the fifth or sixth century, previous to 

 which they appear to have used camels. 



As to the argument that we have no evidence 

 of the former existence of wild horses in Central 

 Arabia, the same negative testimony might once 

 have been cited to prove that there were never 

 elephants in Mesopotamia, whereas there is geologi- 

 cal and historical evidence to show that a species 

 closely allied to, if not identical with, the Indian 

 elephant inhabited that country during the early 

 part of the human era. 



Professor Ridgeway, 1 on the other hand, be- 

 lieves Northern Africa to have been the birthplace 

 of the Arab stock. "It is now clear," he writes, 

 " that for many centuries before the Arabs ever 

 owned a horse, all the Libyan tribes possessed 

 a most notable breed, which in size, shape, speed, 

 colour, and docility, very closely resembled the 

 kohl breed of Arabia. As it has been shown that 

 Egypt was exporting horses into Asia Minor in 

 the time of Solomon, and that Arab tradition points 

 to Egypt as the region from whence the best 

 horses were obtained in the time of Muhammad, 

 and as Egypt derived her horses in great part 

 from Libya, we are justified in concluding that 



1 The Thoroughbred Horse, p. 246. 



