Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 12, 1995 TAG: 9511130102
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARLISE SIMONS THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: PARIS LENGTH: Long
Deep in Tibet, in a high and icy valley, the explorers came across the first of the enigmatic creatures. They saw one, then three of them grazing in the open forest. Soon, to their astonishment, a whole herd of the unusual horses appeared.
``They looked completely archaic, like the horses in prehistoric cave paintings,'' said Michel Peissel, a French ethnologist and the expedition leader. ``We thought it was just a freak, then we saw they were all alike.''
A team of French and British explorers, just returned here from a six-week expedition in Tibet, say they believe they found an ancient breed of horse previously unknown to scientists.
The Riwoche horse, as the explorers have named it after its home region in northeastern Tibet, is close to four feet high, about the size of a pony. Its head is triangular and has the same wedge shape as the zebra or as the vanished horses of Stone Age drawings in Europe. It has a beige coat, bristly mane, black stripe on its back and black lines on its lower legs.
The explorers and other scientists believe that the breed may provide a new piece in the puzzle of equine evolution. Although horses have been vital to humans in work, transport and warfare for many centuries, scientists say the tale of how horses developed and diversified is far from complete.
They believe it took perhaps 50 million years for a small browsing animal less than two feet high, named the Eohippus, to evolve and branch off into rhinos and tapirs as well as into the species that eventually developed into the zebra, ass, donkey and horse.
The modern horse is thought to be 5 million years old. Cave men hunted it and ate it. Only for the last 3,000 to 5,000 years has the horse been domesticated.
Steven Harrison, a geneticist at the Royal Agricultural College in Cirencestor, England, will do DNA tests on the Tibetan horses' blood samples.
``It's very rare to find a big mammal we did not know about,'' he said. ``It will be very interesting to compare the genetic markers to those of other wild horses,'' such as Przewalski's horse, a wild Mongolian breed first recorded about a century ago.
Dr. Ignasi Casas, a veterinarian who was a member of the expedition, said he believed the Riwoche (ree-woe-chay) breed may be a ``relic population'' that lived isolated from others and thus preserved its characteristics.
``It looks very primitive and very tough,'' Casas said. ``Horses in the adjacent areas are very different.''
Although the animals were roaming free in the Riwoche region, Casas believes that one explanation for their archaic form is that the 17-mile-long valley where they were found is closed off on both sides by passes about 16,000 feet high.
``Horses would not roam through those passes easily because at that altitude there is no grass, no food to survive,'' Casas said.
Down in the valley, which is studded with hamlets of Bon-po people, the pre-Buddhist natives of the region, farmers catch the horses with a lasso when they want to ride them or pack them, said Casas. Then they set the horses free until they are needed again.
``We could approach them to about 15 feet, then they moved,'' he said. Nonetheless, the team caught some of the horses, sampled their blood and filmed them for future studies.
``There is nothing in the literature about this horse,'' said Casas, who is associated with the Royal Animal Health Trust, an equine research center and clinic in Newmarket, England.
``It's an exciting find because horses have bred and mixed and traveled all over the world, but this one so far seems unique.''
The purpose of the expedition was to observe and test the properties of the Nangchen horse, a breed Peissel first recorded in 1993. He reported that it had lungs and a heart that were larger than those of other Tibetan horses, a possible result of centuries of living in high altitudes.
Western groups had been interested, he said, because these animals seemed to have properties that made them especially suitable for racing.
On this journey, Peissel had hoped to take some Nangchen horses to Lhasa, Tibet's capital, for further study.
``It's very difficult to get permits from the Chinese military to go there,'' Peissel said. ``Those areas are banned to foreigners and they have been very little explored.''
The six Westerners, who were French, British and Spanish, set off by car from Lhasa on Sept. 15 and headed east-northeast for the upper basin of the Salween River.
Peissel, who was making his 25th journey through Tibet, had earlier explored this region of the Central Asian plateau. Last year he announced that he had located the exact source of the Mekong River in the area.
At Dengchen they formed a caravan of 24 horses, 11 Tibetans and 6 Europeans.
``It was very bleak,'' said Peissel, 58. ``We had to cope with hailstorms and trek along precarious trails with very steep drops. I think it was the most difficult journey I ever made.''
Peissel said horses were crucial in the history of the Tibetans and at one time the Tibetans sold up to 30,000 horses per year to the Ming emperors in China.
In October, halfway into their journey back to Lhasa, they were blocked by early snow in the mountain passes and forced to take a different and little-explored route. The group came across other surprises.
Near the upper Salween River, for example, the caravan saw large forests that did not appear on any maps.
``It was very peculiar because this was a very bleak, icy and grassy high plateau, and suddenly there were these forests in the middle of the tundra,'' Peissel said. ``They could be remnants of the ancient forests that once covered much of Tibet.''
There were enormous trees, conifers, willows, birches and other vegetation that looked untouched.
``Because access is so difficult and there are no bridges,'' he went on, ``the forests have survived the axes of the Chinese, who are logging Tibet intensively.''
Even more unexpected in the high and freezing landscape, he said, there were native macaques, which are medium-size monkeys that browse under the snow, eating leaves and insects. Nearby, he said, there were rare white-lipped deer.
It was here, in the fourth week of the expedition, the group came across the unknown horses.
``It was the fortuitous outcome of being snowbound,'' Peissel said. ``First there was one herd, then deeper into the valley there were more.''
by CNB