6 THE HORSE, ASS, AND MULE 



The first association of man with the prehistoric horse so far as 



discovered existed in the Paleolithic or Stone Implement Age. 

 It is assumed that man first hunted horses for food, then drove 

 them, and finally used them for riding and then as beasts of 

 burden. The bones of human beings have been found in connec- 

 tion with prehistoric horse remains in South America, but not in 

 North America. In Europe man and the prehistoric horse were 

 without doubt associated. 



The connecting link between the prehistoric horse and the horse 

 of modern times is assumed to be the present form of the zebra, 



Fig. 3. Restoration of the four-toed horse. Photograph from original water 

 color by C. R. Knight, based on mounted skeleton sixteen inches high, 

 in American Museum of Natural History 



the wild ass of Asia and Africa, and Przewalskii's horse. The 

 latter was discovered by Poliakoff in 1881 on the desert of 

 Zungaria in western Mongolia in Asia. It has been assumed 

 that this type of wild pony, standing forty inches high, is quite 

 similar to the horse as known by prehistoric man thirty thousand 

 years ago. The European cave drawings show a strong resem- 

 blance to the Przewalskii horse, and it is probable that from such 

 an ancestry has come the Norwegian, Irish, and other ponies of 

 northern Europe, and the wild horse of Mongolia and China. 



