398 ANIMAL REMAINS FROM THE EXCAVATIONS AT ANAU. 
regards Equus przewalskii, which it has been recently attempted to raise abso- 
lutely to the position of ancestor of the Occidental and Oriental horses,* con- 
sidering it to be a survival of Equus caballus germanicus Nehring, we must remark 
that according to Matschie} there are three types or subspecies of the Przewalski 
horse which differ in size and form according to locality and environment. Among 
them Equus hagenbeckii Matschie appears to stand nearest to the Anau horse. 
The pieces measured by me from Equus przewalskii, which, however, did not 
belong to this subspecies, do not agree as well with the Anau horse as with the 
more stout-boned Siberian horses. In the construction of the teeth Equus prze- 
walskii appears rather to be a survival of the Siberian diluvial horse and to repre- 
sent the small horse of the Germans as we meet it in Equus caballus nehringi, but we 
can not decide this with certainty and so long as we can depend merely upon the 
existing materials we can only stand by the expression of the possibilities we 
have mentioned. It is to be hoped that later excavations by Professor Pumpelly 
will produce more complete material and more far-reaching conclusions. 
Meanwhile, I may express my opinion as to the cause of the characteristic 
differences between the Occidental horse and the Oriental breed, although, as has 
been said above, both are assumed to be derived from the same ancestral form. 
It is only a supposition, a hypothesis, which has presented itself to me during 
the thorough study of the remains already described. 
As is well known, Equus przewalskiv still roams in the Djungarian Gobi and 
the neighboring tracts of the Tian Shan region. But that part especially of the 
Gobi—near the lakes—where alone, according to Przewalski, Equus przewalski 
lives, has the character of a steppe with boundless pastures of reed-grasses and 
salt plants. Still more exuberant is the plant growth of the Tian Shan districts. 
In strong contrast with these stands the Kara Kum—the Black Sands—the 
most forbidding desert of the whole world. Sand, for the most part shifting 
dunes, covers the immense surface; only in those places where the sand is to a 
certain extent arrested in its movement is it possible for the saxaul (Haloxylon 
ammodendron) and some desert grasses to grow and furnish a very scant nourish- 
ment to the few animals of the desert. 
It was, as now, the “flying sand’’ that forced animals as well as man onto the 
shrinking oases, and caused concentration of family groups to battle against this 
enemy, with the aid, first of natural, and later of regulated irrigation. The horse, 
which, like the wild ox, still roamed wild in the Kara Kum when the North Kur- 
gan was founded at Anau, was no longer an animal of the grassy steppes, but had 
become a denizen of the desert. 
The Kara Kum, as a desert, could never have nourished the horse without 
the aid of man—man who raised the necessary fodder in his oases along the foot 
of the Kopet Dagh. But it does not follow that the horse did not remain an animal 

*Th. Studer, Die Knochenreste aus d. Hoehle z. Kesslerloch bei Thayngen. Denksch. d. Schweizer 
Naturf. Gesell., Bd. xxix, 1904.—H. Kraemer, Zur Aelteste Geschichte d. Pferde. Jahrb. Pflanzen u. 
Tierziichtung, von Miiller, 1905. 
+P. Matschie, Giebt es in Mittelasien mehrere Arten von echten Wildpferden? Naturw. Wochensch., 
Bd. 18, pp. 581-583, 1903. 
