May 9, 2008

Wild Horses Flying

Horses have always been with us. At Lascaux. On the Ural steppes. Among the Sumerians, the Scythians, the Chinese… It's not much of an exaggeration to say that the domestication of the horse made civilization possible. And here's a little known fact: horses evolved in North America, were wiped out by the ice age about 8,000 years ago, but not before they crossed the Bering land bridge and spread throughout the rest of the world. When the Spanish reintroduced horses to the New World, they were an indigenous species belatedly coming home. Horses, wild horses, are woven into the texture of the American character. Yet they are terribly endangered, by us. To hear more about this amazing and troubling story I turned to Deanne Stillman, author of Mustang, The Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West. It's a powerfully written, very moving book. Deanne was one of the very first guests on EP and it was a great pleasure to talk with her again. Total runtime an hour and seventeen minutes. Tears allowed.