[F17] ‘Origin and Influence of the Thoroughbred Horse,’ p. 92.
Through the courtesy of Sir William Turner I recently had the opportunity of examining some horse, sheep, and dog bones found near Grangemouth 30 feet below the surface, at the point where the Carron joins the Forth. Two imperfect horse skulls belonged to ponies of the “forest” type, which probably measured 12 hands at the withers, a broken sheep skull belonged to a member of the peat or turbary race, and a dog skull differed but little from that of a modern greyhound. Taking into consideration the position and nature of the deposit, one may provisionally assume that the bones belong to animals which lived in the Forth valley about the end of the Neolithic Age,—the dog and sheep undoubtedly lived under domestication, but whether the horses were tame or wild is uncertain.
The next horse bones from Scotch deposits available for study consisted of the skulls and limb-bones from Newstead, already referred to. Several of the horses in the possession of the Roman auxiliaries who garrisoned the Border Fort in the first century were over 15 hands, and had the face bent downwards on the cranium as in Kirghiz horses,—in one case the deflection is so great that the hard palate forms an angle of nearly 20´ with the cranium (in the forest horse the face is in a line with the cranium). In one of the bent skulls the molars have as short pillars as in E. stenonis (fig. 21) of the Italian Pliocene.[F18] Two of the Newstead skulls belong to ponies about 12 hands high, one to a pony, Arab-like in make, with metacarpals measuring 214 mm. by 28·8 mm.—i.e., to a fine-boned pony about 13 hands at the withers. The skull and teeth of the 12-hands ponies indicate that one was about two-thirds “forest,” the other two-thirds “Celtic”; the teeth as well as the skull and cannon-bones of the 13-hands pony indicate that it was nearly a pure member of the Celtic or Libyan race. According to Dio Cassius, the Caledonians “went to war on chariots as their horses were small and fleet.” The two 12-hands Newstead ponies were probable members of the race which the Caledonians, Mætæ, and other tribes of northern Britain yoked to their war chariots. It is conceivable that soon after the Roman period ponies were taken from the mainland of Scotland to both the Western and Northern Islands. That ponies, resembling in make and size the small Newstead horses, reached Shetland some centuries before the northern islands fell into the hands of the Norsemen, is suggested by a broken pelvic bone belonging to a pony between 11 and 12 hands, found in 1911 at the Jarlshoff broch, Sumburgh, by Mr Charles M. Douglas. During the autumn of 1912, by permission of Mrs Bruce of Sumburgh, and with the help of Mr Bennet Clark, I examined a number of old hearths at Jarlshoff, probably formed about the same time as the deposit in which Mr Douglas found the broken pelvic bone.
[F18] Until the Newstead skulls were found it was believed horses with short-pillared teeth became extinct thousands of years ago.
The bones of the Celtic shorthorn and of turbary sheep, the presence of hammer-stones, pieces of pottery and scrapers, of limpet and other shells, together with the bones and implements collected during the excavations by the late Mr John Bruce of Sumburgh, support Mr Douglas’s view that horses reached Shetland some centuries before the turbulent Norse jarls, harassed by Harold Fairhair, began to settle in the Northern and Western Islands of Scotland.
It may hence be assumed that Shetland ponies are mainly descended from the “small and fleet” race yoked to the chariots of the Caledonians at the battle of Mons Graupius. This ancient race (which was probably brought to Britain during the late Celtic period) was probably originally a blend of the slender-limbed, Arab-like ponies of the Swiss Lake-dwellers and of a thick-set race of the Elephant-Bed type. That the Shetland blend is an old one is suggested by the account Herodotus gives of the horses belonging to a tribe on the north of the Danube. This tribe (the Sigynnæ), Herodotus says, “had horses with shaggy hair, five fingers long, all over their bodies, and which were small and flat-nosed, and incapable of carrying men,[F19] but when yoked under a chariot were very swift, in consequence of which the natives drove in chariots.” Judging by this description, the chief difference between typical modern Shelties and the small horses of Central Europe in the time of Herodotus is a difference of size.
[F19] Herodotus probably means these small horses were incapable of carrying men into battle.