We started with the Caspian, which was easy because we had a fairly large herd of them which we bred. There were also Caspians previously exported from Iran to the United Kingdom for comparison. We moved on to the Persian "Arab" or Asil as the breed is called here, and that was also easy because Mary Gharagozlou had spent a lifetime studying, collecting and running the Horse Society's registration program, and knew which of the horses were pure Persian and which had foreign "Arab" blood. The Kurds were fairly easy to identify, but there were few of them left. Then we came to the Turkomans and the project began to look more difficult.

In the five years that have passed since then, we have learned a great deal about Akhal-Tekes, the various types of Turkomans, and we discovered the Yabou. At the time, however, little was known about the extent of breeding Thoroughbred stallions with Turkoman mares in the north of Iran, if there was a significant difference between the various strains of Turkomans, or if there were other breeds of horses in the area. There was also the question: were the Akhal-Teke and the Turkoman the same breed (i.e., genetically the same).

We took blood from horses that we knew had Thoroughbred sires and Turkoman dams; also those we knew to be pure Turkoman of the three main strains: Tekke, Yamoud and Goklan. We also took blood from random samplings of cart horses in Gonbad, the principal town. In order to cover the equine population completely, we took blood from the horses used for packing and farm work in the forested mountains adjacent to the Turkmen Steppes.

The results of Dr. Cothran's tests have led to the following hypothesis:

It will be noticed that the Caspian is ancestral to all of these horses, with the exception of the Przewalski. Next comes the Yabou, followed by the Turkoman and Akhal-Teke, and then the Kurd and the Arabs.

Of equal interest is the genetic shared marker chart:

The Yabou has the highest average shared markers with all the other breeds noted in this chart.

The Yabou is found in the forested mountainous regions of northeastern Iran: both the Elborz and the Kopet Dag. The horse stands from 140 to 150 centimeters [13.3 hh to 14.3 hh] and comes in bay, black, chestnut and grey. Most of these horses have a rapid pacing action. When questioned, the owners of these horses said they mainly did not breed them themselves, but bought them from itinerant horse dealers. As the Turkmen will deal only with their own breed, the only ones left are the gypsies. These gypsies wander from Iran through Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Afghanistan freely, without benefit of visas, and own large herds of horses which they trade. If this is truly the source, then this same Yabou exists in these countries also.

There has been much attention focused on the large horse found in the Pazyryk kurgans, and research by such eminent scientists as Yetts and Bökönyi have identified it as emanating from Ferghana in present-day Uzbekistan. It was described as "sweating blood" which, according to Maloufi, occurs only in Ferghana and by the Gorgan river in the province of Golistan in northern Iran (they are used for drawing blood of Turkoman and Yabou horses for Dr. Cothran). There were never very many of these horses, as only one was ever found in each burial, whereas up to fourteen of the "other" smaller horses were found.

In addition, the larger horses were richly adorned with face masks and saddles and had been regularly fed, as opposed to the others. They had also been gelded.

Pg. 43: "The shapes of the Scythian horses that found their way to the Altaian region are still preserved by the modern Mongolian horses, with their short and broad heads." I.e., not the Turkoman (LF) The representations of the Chertomlyk vase show the average Scythian horse … that supplied the majority of the horses of the Altaian kurgans and, in our opinion, now and then in the Scythian material of the south of Russia, there were certain horses whose size exceeded that of the average. In his study, Vitt generally ranges these horses of outstanding size in the same group as the former. Sometimes, however, he considers them to be members of an independent group of special Central Asian origin. Anyhow, it seems that, side by side with the undoubtedly excellent Scythian horses, there existed in Central Asia smaller local groups of horses. The members of these groups were larger of body and perhaps also possessed other eminent qualities lacking in the former. They must have been valued highly by the Scythians themselves, and so it was only the leaders who came by them -- and even they could only acquire few of them -- since only one was found in each kurgan." The horses in question were chiefly Ferghana horses, whose fame was well known in China, too.