THE KYRGYZ HORSE, A GENETIC AND CULTURAL INHERITANCE TO SAVEGUARD

The horses are the wings of the Kyrgyz
Kyrgyz saying

The horse of the Kyrgyz nomads printed his indelible mark in the epopee, the poems, the songs, the accounts of the explorers, the books of history and the texts of Old. It is the vital source of the Kyrgyz culture, which is closely related to the nomadism.

Its qualities of resistance, endurance and sobriety, so much praised during centuries, are the result of a natural and judicious selection carried out, generation after generation, by the Kyrgyz stockbreeders.

From this selection results a perfect adaptation to the natural conditions and the climate in the Tian Shan mountains as well as to the work which was imposed to him by the way of life and the customs and habits of the Kyrgyz nomads.

This horse is today in process of extinction. With him also the traditions disappear which were associated for him.

“This problem is not secondary, it is not either folkloric, because it's concerns the disappearance of a genetic and cultural inheritance which is not only that of the Kyrgyz, but that of the Humanity” (Jean-Louis Gouraud, historian of the horse - France, 1992).

Many types of horses currently support this sad fate, everywhere in the world. It is a whole inheritance which disappears. It is time to act.