Short History of Horses' Evolution
	Of all the domestic animals, the horses have been permanently associated with the progresses of human culture and civilization. It boosted human trade, migrations and conquests. The era of the technology let the role of the horse obsolete. The horse was domesticated in the Asian steppes. Today, the genus Equus, comprising the horse, has 7 species: horse (E. caballus), donkey and African wild ass (E. asinus), onager or Asian w ... [read more >>]
	26 March 2008, 11:32GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Longest Tail Horse: 12.5 ft (3.8 m)!
	Wild horses (today, only Prjewalski horses are a wild species) prefer the fashion of short tails. Domestic and bewildered horses (read mustangs) wear longer tails. And here comes Summer Breeze, a Kansas mare. There's nothing fake in the image you see. Tail extensions are excluded. This exceptional horse has such a long tail that it cannot wear it freely outside the arena, but braided and covered in a white tube sock, so ... [read more >>]
	10 March 2008, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

6 Amazing Things About Rhinos and Their Horns
	1.We associate rhinoceroses with the African savannas and the forests of southern Asia. But rhinoceroses appeared in fact in North America 54 Ma ago, from a common ancestor with the horses and tapirs. In time, rhinos diversified in many genera and species. Baluchitherium, which lived 30 Ma ago in Central Asia in a time when Himalaya did not exist, was the largest ever land mammal: 5.2 m (18 ft) tall, 8.2 m (27 ft) long and 15 tons heavy. T ... [read more >>]
	22 February 2008, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Five Amazing Things About Celts
	1. Four millennia ago, the mix between one of the first waves of Indo-Europeans and pre-Indo-Europeans populations gave rise to the Celts, in the (nowadays) southern Germany, between the river Rhine and Danube. The Celts developed a skilled iron metallurgy and this allowed them to produce powerful weaponry. During the La Tene epoch, between the 5th and 1st centuries BC, the Celts were involved into an expansion movement. They occupied most ... [read more >>]
	09 February 2008, 02:26GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Who Were the Iberians?
	Today, the word "Iberian" makes you think about Spain and Portugal, but the word comes from the name of an ancient population that inhabited the southern and eastern Iberian Peninsula in Antiquity. Historical sources starting with the 5th century BC describe the barbarian inhabitants of "Hispania", with odd habits and bloody rituals. The Iberian tribes lived in settlements located on the top of the hills, in s ... [read more >>]
	07 February 2008, 15:11GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Hittites: The People That Discovered the Iron
	The Hittites were mentioned even in the Bible. Their roots started with the Indo-European invasion in Anatolia (Asia Minor, now Turkey) 4,000 years ago. Around 1530 BC, the Hittites already made rapid invasions in the neighboring areas, and destroyed Babylon. By those times, Hittites were a warlike people involved in civil wars each time a king had to be named. But king Telepinu (1525-1500 BC) reformed the organization of the Hi ... [read more >>]
	31 January 2008, 14:46GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Could This Turn into the World's Largest Horse?
	Indeed, rhinos are horses' (and donkeys' and zebras', too) closest evolutionary cousins. And it appears that some horses prove this through their size. Digger, a British Clydesdale, at its 6ft 6in (1.95 m) height at the withers, is Britain's biggest living horse. The horse is only four years old, the equine equivalent of a teenager, so the horse could grow bigger. His new owner, Lisa McFarlane, keeps the h ... [read more >>]
	28 January 2008, 05:40GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Assyrians, the Lords of the Massacres
	Assyrians were one of the most warlike people in history, lovers of the violence of the war and hunt. Amongst the people of the ancient Middle East, they were famous for their cruelty. At the peak of its power, Assyria stretched from Egypt to Persian Gulf. Their aggressiveness was partially attributed to their location: Assyria was in northern Mesopotamia, north of Babylon. As no natural bounders like shores or mountains were found there, ... [read more >>]
	26 January 2008, 03:44GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

5 Things about Donkeys
	1. Donkeys are, let's say, a desert horse or zebra. In fact, a zebra species from northwestern Africa, Grevy's zebra, is something intermediary between a donkey and a zebra, whereas a species of Asian wild ass from Tibet, kiang, is something intermediary between horses and donkeys. 2. In comparison to a horse, a donkey has increased stamina, stands with worse food and sheltering, and lives longer. Smaller size is an advantage ... [read more >>]
	08 December 2007, 09:09GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Zebras, the Horses of the African Savanna
	Zebras represent a symbol of the African savanna. But, did you know that their evolution (and that of horses and asses) started 54 million years ago, in North America, with Hyracotherium, a fox sized animal with four toed fore limbs and three toed rear limbs? They lived in forests, but 20 million years ago, the clime turned dry and vast savannas appeared on North America, boosting the evolution of the ancestors of zebra-horses. The first s ... [read more >>]
	07 December 2007, 02:36GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Odd Animal Statues
	Since antiquity, people have built statues to the animals. This was done for various religious or cultural reasons. For example, the animal could have represented the image of a god or was linked to local myths and legends, like the famous Roman statue of the she-wolf feeding Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome. Copies of this famous statue are found today in many countries speaking Romance (Latin-derived) languages, as these peopl ... [read more >>]
	27 October 2007, 05:17GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

World's Largest and Smallest Horses
	It is true that the oldest horse, Hyracotherium, was the size of a fox. And it's equally true that the closest relatives of horses, donkeys and zebras are the rhinoceros. And the world's records in horse sizes do vary from a fox to a rhinoceros. The largest horses in the world belong to the English breed Shire. These horses are often taller than 1.8 m (6 ft) and reach a weight of one tone (almost as much as a rhino) ... [read more >>]
	30 July 2007, 14:41GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Atari - 'My Horse and Me' for Wii, DS and PC
	Atari (third-party video game publisher) has recently announced that they would publish My Horse and Me for the PC, Wii ... [read more >>]
	19 July 2007, 02:48GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Who Are the Gauchos?
	They are part of the history and legend of the austral planes even from the colonial times. These tough and hard men enjoy the vast spaces, grazing the cattle, in a life half spent riding a horse. It all started in the 17th and 18th centuries, when the Spanish started colonizing the Argentinian lands south of Rio de la Plata. In the inhospitable plains, where the only tree you can find is the poisonous ombu, life was constantly menaced ... [read more >>]
	07 July 2007, 10:04GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Meet the Zorse: Half Zebra, Half Horse
	No, this is not about insufficient white paint. Because this is not an incompletely painted zebra. There is no artificial coloring on the animal you see. This a female zorse: her father is a zebra, while her mother is a mare, this being the classical example of how a child receives a mix of genes from both progenitors. What is more unusual in this case is that while most zebra-horse crossbreeds "wear" stripes, even ... [read more >>]
	28 June 2007, 06:22GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Sushi Made of Raw Horse?
	Sushi is an integral part of the Japanese culture. And tuna is the king of the sushi. But the current world shortages of tuna could remove it from Japan’s sushi menus, something unimaginable in a country where tuna has as many names as snow for the Eskimals. When global fishing bodies recently started lowering the catch limits for the world’s rapidly depleting tuna fisheries, Japan entered a national state of panic. News programs repo ... [read more >>]
	27 June 2007, 03:55GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Horse Records
	The largest horses in the world are those of the English breed Shire. These horses often bypass the height of 1.8 m (6 ft) and reach in weight one tone (almost as much as a rhino, to which horses and their relatives, donkeys and zebras, are related). Average horses have 0.3-0.4 tones. These draft horses are generally tame and due to their enormous size, they generate a huge power: they can drag up to 5 tones and in some areas, they ar ... [read more >>]
	22 May 2007, 16:36GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

What Is the Link Between a Horse's Arse and Space Shuttles
	You're probably wondering what does a horse's arse have to do with the most modern spacecraft. Well...everything. First, a simple truth. Most of you know the popular saying "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." This is probably the key to this apparently impossible link. 1. The railroad For starters, did you know that the US standard railroad gauge (the distance between the inner side ... [read more >>]
	28 April 2007, 07:05GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Pollen to Detect the Origins of the Terracotta Army
	Since their discovery in 1974 in Shaanxi province, the ancient Chinese terracotta army posed a puzzle: Ancient pollen could lead scientists to the kilns where the figures in China's terracotta army were made. The 2,200-year-old clay army made of 8,099 soldiers, 300 horses and 200 chariots guards the tomb of Qin Shihuang (260-210 BC), the first emperor of the unified China (from Quin dynasty comes the western name of ... [read more >>]
	27 March 2007, 09:36GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia