WILD HORSES

Man started taming horses about 5000 years ago. At the time the familiar modern type had not yet developed: it is the result of millennia of human involvement. Of the few original variants of the original species, a descendant still survives: a population of about 1500 horses live wild, free and untamed on the Dzungarian steppes of deep Central Asia.

This Mongolian horse is the only true subspecies of wild horse remaining on Earth: others, more or less lucky survivors that we meet in Asia, in South America and in North America, are masterless or undomesticated horses of modern stock living in the wild. Nonetheless, both populations are symbols of freedom, universal testimonials of the pleasure of running wild; they are exhilarating beauty of unharnessed movement. A small band of dedicated, specialist photographers have for many years tracked wild horses in the farthest reaches of the world, observing and photographing them.

They have taken pictures of great beauty that portray horses of the unbound prairies, grazing, galloping, clashing and mating, driven by instinct and unrestrained by the hand of man. This book is a tribute to humankind's most valued friend, free at last to be the wonderful - and even occasionally wild - creature that millions of years of evolution have created.