Origin of the Alans

[Alanus]

The Berel Horses.: Conformation, Height, & Relationship to Modern Breeds. Part 1

Here is an update on the Berel Horses, southwestern Altai, c. 300 to 275BC, a breed developed by the Arimaspi. Hopefully, this post might answer a few questions. How large and tall were they? What was their physical conformation? And where did the breed originally come from?

New information ties the Berel individuals to Sintashta horses. Estimates place domestication at roughly a thousand years prior to Sintashta. "Given the rapid increase of coat color variation within ancient horses, this study agrees with apriori thesis (Outram et al., 2009) that horse domestication occurred on the Eurasian steppe at the latest by c. 3000BC."  (M. Cieslak, 2011) Originally, Sintashta horses were bred for pulling chariots, stocky of build, muscular, and with strong-bones. Remains of similar horses are found buried along the eastern edges of Deer Stone Khirigsuur complexes in western Mongolia, as archaeologists link the DSK to a Bronze Age culture that developed into the Scytho-Siberians (the Pazyryk-Berel culture). While DSK horses were not large, they were no smaller than today's Mongolian breed which stands at 13-13.5 hands high, "pony" sized.

   
Illustration of preferred coat colors of the Arzhan and Berel horses. We see a predominance of chestnut and bay, dark coats, and typical of horses with hard hooves.

Overall, we are looking at horses smaller than the impression given by Sergei Rudenko in 1953. When he discovered the Pazyryk horses, Rudenko was impressed by their "modern" appearance, likening them to the Akhal teke. He envisioned a long-legged breed, refined, originating in Persia, and imported by the Altai chieftains. I have no idea why Rudenko chose the Akhal teke, other than the fact it was an ancient breed. However, he was looking at dehydrated remains which gave the illusion of "race-horse" refinement. In actuality, the Pazyryk horses were not tall or leggy... even though countless contemporaneous illustrations depict them as near Thoroughbreds.

   
A modern reconstruction of the Berel horse's conformation, not a race horse but with elegance and power (courtesy of Gala Argent). I believe these horses represent an actual breed, locally refined in the Altai and in the Mongolian and Dzungarian steppes, and had no close connection to Persian examples.

To place Pazyryk horses in true perspective, we turn to skull measurements of Arimaspi examples. "Osteometric study of the burial mounds #11 and #18 helped give the provisional description of the animals. Comparison of measurements of the single skull from Mound #18 (standard length: 490mm) with skulls from burial mounds in neighboring districts of Altai shows the Berel skull length was greater than the average skulls length from the Ak-Alaka -1 memorials (475mm), Ulandryk (468mm), and Pazyryk (485mm). The same situation is with the average length of metacarpal and metatarsal bones: Pazyryk horses appear to be smaller."  (Samashev & Serikov, 2015)

Surprisingly, the Berel horses stood an average of 14.2 to 14.3 hands high at the withers. Their size corresponds to the minimum height accepted for a "horse-sized" Welch Cob. Other than the Cob, we have the Morgan, a similar breed which was initially used for pulling and riding. Both breeds are powerful for their size, corresponding well with the ancient Berel examples; and incidentally, look nothing like an Akhal teke.

In the following post, I will try to upload HD photos of Misty, a 20-year-old Morgan mare. She stands to a perfect Berel size-- 14.2 hands high-- weighs 850 pounds, and is the closest horse I could find to duplicate the build and conformation of the original Berel horse. Incidentally, studies of mt and Y-haplogroups of the Berel horses show they were related to almost all modern breeds. More to come in Part 2.