Full of grace and elegance with its naturally high head carriage, long beautifully shaped ears, always alert. The skin is thin and the coat, fine and silky with a golden, almost metallic hue. Known for its hardiness, endurance and beauty. A natural athlete and equine aristocrat.History: The Akhal Teke breed stands at the very beginning of cultural horse breeding in the world. It has got such an unrepeatable and strange history, as unrepeatable and strange as is the extraordinary beauty of the Turkmen Argamak Obviously even the wild ancestors of the central Asian horses considerably differed from other kinds, among which are the Pshevalski horse or the Tarpan.The dry, continental climate of South Turkmenistan, having winters with little snow, vast meadows with rich grass in the foothills of the Kopeh Dag mountains and the permanent thread of predators led to the development of a relatively tall, fast horse, less adopted to withstand famine and thus less frugal.The domestication of these horses in the foothills and the plains of Turkmenistan probably happened already early. But it can’t be ruled out, that IndoIranian tribes, which settled in Turkmenistan brought along already domesticated horses of further northern origin. But under the Turkmenian conditions the local wild forms of horses, because of the higher values for the people, could then withstand the imported horses, either as a result of a repeated domestication of local forms, or as a result of absorbing in the crossbreeding of imported and local horses.The echo of these long past occurrences might be the old legends about the origin of the Central Asian Horses, written down in Chinese and Arabian Chronicles.According to one of them, by the Arabian geographer Ibn Khordabakh, the best Central Asian horses came from the wild stallion ‘taller than others, who produced offspring of tall and beautiful stature’, ‘they are tamed’ and they literally flew between heaven and earth, listen to the bridle, with easy gaits.When the offspring of the Central Asian noble horses turned up in the countries of the old eastern civilisation, in Egypt, the Near East and India, according to descriptions and illustrations that came down to us, they were dry and well built, with a highly carried neck, a light head, mostly with golden colours.It is clear that it must have taken centuries until man managed to breed such extraordinary horses. The majority of antique sources confirm that their homeland – the homeland of the best horses of the antique world – was situated in Central Asia.

Website: http://www.angelfire.com/ga4/horses/