Talk:Iberian horse/Archive 1

Edits & history
User Montanabw edited my last edit, removed 'history' section, and there are following problems with that edit; primo, contrary to what user Montanabw states Marismeño horse is not an offshot of Sorraia, it is a horse on its own from southern Spain (Royo at al, p.663), whereas Sorraia is a Portuguese breed with quite extreme bottleneck effect ( two maternal lines ), and the hypothesis that the Sorraias represent the ancestors of the present Southern Iberian horses ( e.g. d'Andrade 1945) would not be well supported on a maternal genetic basis). secundo, Montanabw wrote as a summary of her/his edit ''(Sources lack full and proper citation. Your information is also misinterpreted, the Moors invaded c. 700 AD, and the 5000 BC date is highly speculative) well, when I state domestication of horses in the Iberian peninsula dates back either to late 13th century B.C.E. - invasion of Iberian Peninsula by African tribes who brought domesticated horse with them (after M. Pidal, Baroja) (Ramon Menendez Pidal,; Julio Caro Baroja ) I meant 13th century BC or some 3300 years ago - Iberian tribes came from Africa to migrate/invade the Iberian Peninsula during the Bronze Age (after Pidal and Baroja) or during the Copper Age - 2000 years earlier. When I state they [horses] came with Sredny Stog culture people some 5000 years ago (Anthony http://users.hartwick.edu/anthonyd/harnessing%20horsepower.html ,1992, Horse, Wheel,Language 2009)'' I mean 3000 B.C.E. It should be noted that Azzaroli links the domesticated horse introduction into Spain with Bell-Beaker culture but he states that they were not ridding people, and the ridding horse came with Celtic tribes in the 9th-7th century BCE (Azzaroli, p.124-125 ) Whereas I agree that sources lacked full citations, I do not work for Wikipedia, and do this on my free time :)   - I have not had time to add full and more sources, and this edit by Montanabw imposes unduly harsh standard  without first finishing the article that is now incomplete and unscientific, I guess quite a 'novel standard' in Wikipedia, encyclopedia that is mostly built on unsourced material and slow period of adjustment of articles to desired wikipedia standard, ie., sourced and cited. tertio, statement in new edit - Iberian horses are thought to be one of the oldest types of domesticated horses is a hearsay and needs a source citation to such statement,and closer to truth is 'oldest types of domesticated horses in Europe' - Asia has seen domestication 1-3000 years before Europe quarto, Iberian Horses in antiquity period needs inclusion - Ann Hyland wrote Equus, Horse in the Roman World, it has a section devoted to Iberian horses, but more scientific approach is in  Azzaroli, Fernando Quesada Sanz, Caballo en la antigua Iberia., and also  Roman writers like Columella, Vegetius etc quinto, Medieval period is needed - perhaps also Hyland but then also Spanish authors etc sexto, Early modern period through end of the 18th century - development of Andalusian horse, spread to the Americas, - many authors, but precious sources from the popular horsemanship and breeding manuals known as libro de la gineta septimo, Napoleonic period and 19th century - decline of Iberian horse octavo, Modernity and establishment of current breeds based on stud books etc I would be a fool to claim having possessed all the knowledge in the equine history - :), but I know a bit and would like to collaborate, therefore I think it will aid this article if we all work together here, (my main area of research is ancient Eurasian steppe and Iranian peoples of Central Asia, early modern Eastern Europe and Ottoman Turkey, American Plains Indian pre-1880s horse culture, and  Spanish 16-17th century Libros de la gineta), and improve this article and its parts. It would be grat is people from Spain and Portugal versed (via language, recent literature and access to it) in these subject joined the effort here - bienvenidos DarioTW (talk) 05:55, 10 February 2011 (UTC)


 * OK, I agree the article needs expansion and improvement, but it is mostly about the modern Iberian breeds, not the history of the Iberian horse (that would be another good article, though, maybe you should create it!) A lot of what you wrote above would make more sense if you'd slow down, spell words like "riding" properly, refrain from throwing in insults, (especially at me, as I am actually trying to help you out here, and I work for free in my spare time too!)  and not toss around random facts without full citation -- you need to cite fully so other people can access what you claim to be quoting. However, I DO happen to have a copy of the Anthony book, so toss me a page number for your bit about the Sredni Stog culture, because I can verify that or not.  Hyland is solid, but I don't have her books, so must trust you not to misquote or misuse material (which I don't yet because so far you are pretty careless) The material on the arrival of Iberian people and horses is worth further study.  Overall the problem is the way you throw in massive edits to these articles, disorganized, and not properly cited.  It would take hours to painstakingly review and revise what you write because it is, frankly, incomprehensible.  Your English skills are less of a worry if you'd just make smaller, sequential edits, and properly provide full source citations with a good URL so other people can easily find the source material and rephrase things as needed.    Montanabw (talk) 05:41, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Re Iberian horse
Hi. I'm the author of the last changes to the article and wanted to disscus a few things about your edits. My take, as i signaled is still a Work In Progress, so perhaps you've been a bit too fast ...
 * I did hide some of the information with references which you have restored. It is either redundant with the list or plainly wrong (the Retuertas vs Sorraia association, f.i.) It contains, though some valuable references, i did not want to delete so soon


 * The Column Type may not be not very standard, but it had a purpose. Historically the bulk of the horse stock in Spain has had a few very distinctive features:


 * The lack of cold bloods /heavy draft horses from native stocks
 * The economical priority of mule breeding over horse. Most ewes were turned to this breeding
 * The bulk of of the stock (until the mid XX century) were pony C-D sized horses (12-14 some hands), what we call jacas. And most of the listed breeds are simply the survivors ... with the criollos of South America.
 * Having a column pointing to the size (and separating the pony sized in to groups -the jaca and the small pony) would give a casual reader a better insight in this caracteristic, specially when the general image of the iberian horse is that of the Andalusian/Lusitano/Lippizaner type

Most of this I hope will make into the article, properly sourced

If you find a proper title, i think the information available in that column was valuable and should be restored --Wllacer (talk) 20:44, 18 March 2012 (UTC)


 * We can discuss what material to move and keep, but the general rule is to NOT remove (or hide) sourced information without discussion. We might be able to use both sources for various info.  I do agree there is some redundant material and that the chart is nice and handy. I'm thinking that your discussion of mule and coldblood breeding could go into a narrative paragraph, and no problem if you want to whip up something.   But we MUST stick with standard English terminology, or maybe just put in the height range (in both hands, inches and centimeters so people worldwide can understand  we have a template that does conversions)  In English we don't say "big pony" (and "ewes" are female sheep, not horses, by the way) or have any classification other than horse and pony.  If there is a place for narrative to explain what a "jaca" is, or something like that, we could discuss the Spanish classification system and maybe put in the Spanish terms and definitions, but the English translations like "big pony" are non-standard and really of no use at all.  The "cutoff" between horses and ponies is actually random, ranging in English-speaking nations from 14 hands in Australia to 14.3 in some FEI competition.  Truth is, as explained in the pony article, "pony" status is more of a phenotype designation anyway.  Also, in English, the only breed that uses "ABCD" height classifications is, I think, the Welsh pony.  Montanabw (talk) 18:44, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Last first, the ABCD classification comes from the Spanish Hipical Federation I thought it was widespread and is handy to avoid the phenotipical image. Legally in Spain the cutoff is now 150 cm (14h3). It was formerly 147 cm ( 7 cuartas,14h2).
 * Don't know how ewe came in my mind as a synonym of mare, the ram-head of many PRE, perhaps? ;-) Thanks for correcting me
 * I'm working on the narrative ... simply it takes some time.--Wllacer (talk) 13:30, 20 March 2012 (UTC)


 * The trick on some of this will be to explain the Spanish classifications and such to English speakers, who are not familiar with this. I'm glad to help out with that bit.  If you wonder how to approach something like this, take a look at how we handled the totally atypical coat color classifications in the Fjord horse article -- they are based on Norwegian language, hence totally weird to English speakers, no one else does them that way, and so we have a lot of time spent explaining the terminiology and what each thing means.  Montanabw (talk) 17:27, 20 March 2012 (UTC)