Editing Przewalski's horse (section)

===History===
[[File:Anneau, M.C. 8756.jpg|thumb|upright|Przewalski's horse on bronze ring made in Northern [[Hebei]] and Western [[Liaoning]]. 6th-5th century BCE. [[Musée Cernuschi]]]]
Przewalski's-type wild horses appear in European cave art dating as far back as 20,000 years ago,<ref name=IUCN/> but genetic investigation of a 35,870-year-old specimen from one such cave instead showed an affinity with extinct Iberian horse lineage and the modern domestic horse, suggesting that it was not Przewalski's horse being depicted in this art.<ref>{{cite journal|first1=Antoine |last1=Fages |first2=Kristian |last2=Hanghøj |first3=Naveed |last3=Khan |display-authors=etal |title=Tracking Five Millennia of Horse Management with Extensive Ancient Genome Time Series |journal=Cell |year=2019 |volume=177 |issue=6 |pages=1419–1435 |doi=10.1016/j.cell.2019.03.049|pmid=31056281 |pmc=6547883 |doi-access=free }}</ref> Horse skeletons dating to the fifth to the third millennia BCE, found in Central Asia, with a range extending to the southern [[Ural Mountains|Urals]] and the [[Altai Mountains|Altai]], belong to the genetic lineage of Przewalski's horse.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Librado |first1=Pablo |last2=Khan |first2=Naveed |last3=kusliy |first3=Mariya A.|display-authors=etal |title=The origins and spread of domestic horses from the Western Eurasian steppes |journal=Nature |year=2021 |volume=596 |issue=7882 |pages=634–640 |doi=10.1038/s41586-021-04018-9|pmid=34671162 |pmc=8550961 |bibcode=2021Natur.598..634L |s2cid=239050837 }}</ref> Of particular note are the horses of this lineage found in the archaeological sites of the [[Chalcolithic]] Botai culture. Sites dating from the mid-fourth-millennium BCE show evidence of horse domestication.<ref>{{cite journal|first1=Alan K |last1=Outram |first2=Natalie A |last2=Stear |first3=Robin |last3=Bendrey |first4=Sandra |last4=Olsen |first5=Alexei |last5=Kasparov |first6=Victor |last6=Zaibert |first7=Nick |last7=Thorpe |first8=Richard P |last8=Evershed |title=The Earliest Horse Harnessing and Milking |journal=Science |volume=323 |pages=1332–1335 |year=2009 |issue=5919 |doi=10.1126/science.1168594|pmid=19265018 |bibcode=2009Sci...323.1332O |s2cid=5126719 }}</ref> Analysis of ancient DNA from Botai horse specimens from about 3000 BCE reveals them to have DNA markers consistent with the lineage of modern Przewalski's horses.<ref name="sciencemag.org"/>

There are sporadic reports of Przewalski's horse in the historical record before its formal characterization. The Buddhist monk Bodowa wrote a description of what is thought to have been Przewalski's horse about AD 900,<ref name=isotope /> and an account from 1226 reports an incident involving wild horses during [[Genghis Khan]]'s campaign against the [[Western Xia|Tangut empire]].<ref name=IUCN/>  In the fifteenth century, [[Johann Schiltberger]] recorded one of the first European sightings of the horses in the journal recounting his trip to Mongolia as a prisoner of the [[Mongol]] [[Khan (title)|Khan]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://afs.okstate.edu/breeds/horses/przewalski |series=Breeds of Livestock |title=Przewalski Horse |website=Breeds of Livestock, Department of Animal Science |publisher= Oklahoma State University |access-date=2019-04-29 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141017090523/http://www.ansi.okstate.edu/breeds/horses/przewalski/index.htm |archive-date=17 October 2014 |df=dmy-all}}</ref> Another was recorded as a gift to the Manchurian emperor around 1630, its value as a gift suggesting a difficulty in obtaining them.<ref name=boyd94/> [[John Bell (traveller)|John Bell]], a Scottish doctor in service to [[Peter the Great]] from 1719 to 1722, observed a horse in Russia's [[Tomsk Oblast]] that was apparently this species,<ref name=isotope /> and a few decades later in 1750, a large hunt with thousands of beaters organized by the Manchurian emperor killed between two and three hundred of these horses.<ref name=boyd94/>
[[File:Przewalski horse skull 01.JPG|thumb|Przewalski's horse skull, Brno museum]]
The species is named after a Russian colonel of Polish descent, [[Nikolai Przhevalsky]] (1839–1888) (Nikołaj Przewalski in Polish). An explorer and naturalist, he obtained the skull and hide of an animal shot in 1878 in the Gobi near today's China–Mongolia border. He would travel to the Dzungarian Basin to observe it in the wild.<ref name=isotope /> In 1881, the horse received a formal scientific description and was named ''Equus przevalskii'' by Ivan Semyonovich Polyakov, based on Przewalski's collection and description,<ref name=isotope /><ref name=Nature /> while in 1884, the sole exemplar of the horse in Europe was a preserved specimen in the [[Zoological Museum of the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences|Museum of the Russian Academy of Sciences]] in [[St. Petersburg]].<ref name=Nature /> This was supplemented in 1894 when the brothers Grum-Grzhimailo returned several hides and skulls to St. Petersburg and described the horse's behavior in the wild.<ref name=boyd94/> A number of these horses were captured around 1900 by [[Carl Hagenbeck]] and placed in zoos, and these, along with one later captive, reproduced to give rise to today's population.

After 1903, there were no reports of the wild population until 1947, when several isolated groups were observed and a lone [[filly]] captured. Although local herdsmen reported seeing as many as 50 to 100 takhis grazing in small groups then, there were only sporadic sightings of single groups of two or three animals after that, mostly near natural wells.<ref name=boyd94/> Two scientific expeditions in 1955 and 1962 failed to find any. After herders and naturalists reported single harem groups in 1966 and 1967, the last observation of the wild horse in its native habitat was of a single stallion in 1969.<ref name=boyd94/><ref name=Fijn /> Expeditions after this failed to locate any horses, and the species would be designated "extinct in the wild" for over 30&nbsp;years.<ref name=boyd94/> Competition with livestock, hunting, capture of foals for zoological collections, military activities, and harsh winters recorded in 1945, 1948, and 1956 are considered to be main causes of the decline in Przewalski's horse population.<ref name=GBE2011 />

The wild population was already rare at its first scientific characterization. Przewalski reported seeing them only from a distance and may have instead sighted herds of local [[onager]] Mongolian wild asses. He was only able to obtain specimens of the type from Kirghiz hunters.<ref name=Fijn />  The range of Przewalski's horse was limited to the arid [[Gobi Desert#Dzungaria Basin semi-desert|Dzungarian Basin]] in the [[Gobi Desert]].<ref name=Nature>"Przevalsky's Wild Horse", ''Nature'', 30:391-392 (1884).</ref> It has been suggested that this was not their natural habitat, but, like the onager, they were a steppe animal driven to this barren last refuge by the dual pressures of hunting and habitat loss to agricultural grazing.<ref name=isotope>{{cite journal |first1=Petra |last1=Kaczensky |first2=Martina |last2=Burnik Šturm |first3=Mikhail V. |last3=Sablin |first4=Christian C. |last4=Voigt |first5=Steve |last5=Smith |first6=Oyunsaikhan |last6=Ganbaatar |first7=Boglarka |last7=Balint |first8=Chris |last8=Walzer |first9=Natalia N. |last9=Spasskaya |title=Stable isotopes reveal diet shift from pre-extinction to reintroduced Przewalski's horses |journal=Scientific Reports |volume=7 |page=5950 |year=2017 |issue=1 |doi=10.1038/s41598-017-05329-6|pmid=28729625 |pmc=5519547 |bibcode=2017NatSR...7.5950K }}</ref> There were two distinct populations recognized by local Mongolians, a lighter steppe variety and a darker mountain one. This distinction is seen in early twentieth-century descriptions. Their mountainous habitat included the ''Takhiin Shar Nuruu'' (The Yellow Wild-Horse Mountain Range).<ref name=Fijn>{{cite book |last=Fijn |first=Natasha |chapter=13. The domestic and the wild in the Mongolian horse and the takhi |title= Taxonomic Tapestries: The Threads of Evolutionary, Behavioural and Conservation Research |editor1-last=Behie |editor1-first=Alison M |editor2-last=Ozenham |editor2-first=Marc F |year=2015 |publisher=ANU Press, The Australian National University |location=Canberra |pages=279–298 |doi=10.22459/TT.05.2015.13 |doi-access=free }}</ref> In their last decades in the wild, the remnant population was limited to the small region between the Takhiin Shar Nuruu and Bajtag-Bogdo mountain ridges.<ref name=boyd94 />