In undertaking to consider and determine what particular portion of the earth was the original habitat of the horse, we must not forget that we are in a field that antedates all history, both sacred and profane. When we have gone back to the very first dawnings of historical records we are still far short of the period in which initial light can be reached. In profane history, with more or less safety, we can get back to a point about seventeen hundred years before the Christian era; and in sacred history about two hundred years less. At both of these dates the horses referred to were not in a feral state, but were the companions and servants of man.
There have been two separate theories advanced which demand some attention, because of the eminence and learning of the men who have advanced them. The first is that the original habitat of the horse was on the steppes of High Asia, east and north of the Caspian and the Black Sea. The only argument I have ever seen advanced in support of this theory is based upon the great number of wild horses that are found in that part of the world, and that so many of them are of a dun color. From the frequency of the recurrence of the dun color another theory has sprung up to the effect that the original color of the horse was dun, and hence it is argued that when the dun color appears in our own day it must be taken as evidence that the original color of the horse was dun. This reasoning is very far from being conclusive, for there are dun horses and dun tribes in all breeds, just as there are greys, and the color is just as liable to be transmitted as any other color. In the last century there were many dun horses in England, and at least one of that color was advertised very widely as “the Dun Arabian,” probably a foreign horse, but it is hardly possible that he was an Arabian. It was then the custom of the country to call all foreign horses “Arabians,” no difference from what part of the world they came. It has been stated on what seemed to be good authority that a dun horse once won the Derby, but whether the color may result from line breeding or from atavistic tendencies, the argument advanced does not seem to have any weight in it for the purpose intended.