A little more than seventeen thousand years ago, someone entered a cave in what is today southern France. Their hands were full of brushes and pigments and their mind was fixed on the image of an animal that had captured their imagination. By the light of a fat burning lamp a few simple strokes were applied to the cave wall and preserved the memory of that horse for us to see today. The cave at Lascaux is full of images that might have been painted yesterday but many of the animals shown now are extinct. The wild horses on the cave wall are nearly extinct too - modern horses have evolved through centuries of our human management. But in Mongolia, there are about 250 descendants of this ancestral horse who roam freely. It is highly unlikely that we will be anywhere one of the wild herds of Takhis, as the Mongolians call them, but it's nice to know they will be there.
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