In pursuit of some ideas for Turkmen music to use with the video of an Akhal Teke, I found this video from neighboring Kazakhstan.

The horses seen here are probably of the breed known as Kazakhs. They are tough and efficient users of limited forage, even if they are not exactly sport horses. Even on the steppes of Asia, the horse has been replaced in daily transportation by the motorbike, but it still provides milk, meat and is integral to those who continue to follow nomadic cultural traditions - or those who seek to return to them, as a recent New York Times article reported from neighboring Mongolia.

The game depicted here is translated as â€Å"Girl Chases Boy,� - and I think that pretty much explains it!

In 2006, an American research team studiyng a site at Krasnyi Yar in Kazakhstan announced they had found evidence of a 5,600 year old horse corral. The Botai people at that site probably used the horses for packing the heavy objects that they apparently transported around with them. Evidence of riding is hard to find, as few organic artifacts survive from that era, but lacking evidence to the contrary, it is not impossible that that girls have been chasing boys on horseback all over Kazakhstan since that time.