Wild horse in the context of "Mammoth steppe"

Marmara Island (Turkish: Marmara Adası) is a Turkish island in the Sea of Marmara. With an area of 126.1 km (48.7 sq mi), it is the largest island in the Sea of Marmara and the second-largest island of Turkey - after Gökçeada (formerly Turkish: İmroz; Greek: Ίμβρος Imvros). It is the center of Marmara District in Balıkesir Province. Ships and ferries provide transportation from Istanbul, and motorboats from Tekirdağ and Erdek. Marmara Island has a lot of historical artifacts. The town of Marmaraon the island's south-western coast takes its name from the quarried marble (Ancient Greek: μάρμαρος, romanized: marmaros) for which the town is famous and which gives the island, the sea and the whole region their names.

Marmara Island is notable for its diverse natural and cultural attributes. Located near Istanbul, it features clean waters, pebble and sandy beaches, and ideal trekking routes. The island experiences two distinct climate régimes: Mediterranean on the south and Black Sea on the north side. It is renowned for having the highest mountain peak in the Marmara Sea and is home to Turkey's richest concentration of flora for its land size. Marmara Island is also unique in its support of wild-horse populations and is renowned for its ancient marble quarries.Additionally, it is the birthplace of the enigmatic ancient poet Aristeas (c. 7th century BC) and is known for producing Turkey's most exquisitely flavored sage tea. The island is the only one in Turkey to offer a combination of high mountains, lowlands suitable for agriculture, streams, waterfalls, olive-cultivation, tourism, and mining.

The horse (Equus ferus caballus) is a domesticated, one-toed, hoofed mammal. It belongs to the taxonomic family Equidae and is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature, Eohippus, into the large single-toed animal of today, originally in North America. Humans began domesticating horses around 4000 BCE in Central Asia, and their domestication is believed to have been widespread by 3000 BCE. Horses in the subspecies caballus are domesticated, although some domesticated populations live in the wild as feral horses. These feral populations are not true wild horses, which are horses that have never been domesticated. There is an extensive, specialized vocabulary used to describe equine-related concepts, covering everything from anatomy to life stages, size, colors, markings, breeds, locomotion, and behavior.

Horses are adapted to run, allowing them to quickly escape predators, and possess a good sense of balance and a strong fight-or-flight response. Related to this need to flee from predators in the wild is an unusual trait: horses are able to sleep both standing up and lying down, with younger horses tending to sleep significantly more than adults. Female horses, called mares, carry their young for approximately 11 months and a young horse, called a foal, can stand and run shortly following birth. Most domesticated horses begin training under a saddle or in a harness between the ages of two and four. They reach full adult development by age five, and have an average lifespan of between 25 and 30 years.

Equinae is a subfamily of the family Equidae, known from the Hemingfordian stage of the Early Miocene (16 million years ago) onwards. They originated in North America, before dispersing to every continent except Australia and Antarctica. They are thought to be a monophyletic grouping. Members of the subfamily are referred to as equines; the only extant equines are the horses, asses, and zebras of the genus Equus, with two other genera Haringtonhippus and Hippidion becoming extinct at the beginning of the Holocene, around 11–12,000 years ago.

The subfamily contains two tribes, the Equini and the Hipparionini, as well as two unplaced genera, Merychippus and Scaphohippus. Members of the family ancestrally had three toes, while members of the tribe Equini from the Middle Miocene onwards developed monodactyl feet.

Magdalenian cultures (also Madelenian; French: Magdalénien) are later cultures of the Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic in western Europe. They date from around 17,000 to 12,000 years before present. It is named after the type site of Abri de la Madeleine, a rock shelter (abri) located in the Vézère valley of Tursac in Dordogne, France.

Édouard Lartet and Henry Christy originally termed the period L'âge du renne "the age of the reindeer". They conducted the first archaeological excavation of the type site, publishing in 1875. The Magdalenian is associated with reindeer hunters. Magdalenian sites contain extensive evidence for the hunting of red deer, wild horses, and other megafauna present in Europe toward the end of the Last Glacial Period. The culture was geographically widespread, and later Magdalenian sites stretched from Portugal in the west to Poland in the east, and as far north as France, the Channel Islands, England, and Wales. Besides la Madeleine, the chief stations of the Magdalenian are Les Eyzies, Laugerie-Basse, and Gorges d'Enfer in the Dordogne; Grotte du Placard in Charente and others in Southwest France.

Equidae (commonly known as the horse family) is the taxonomic family of horses and related animals, including asses, zebras, and many extinct species known only from fossils. The family evolved more than 50 million years ago, in the Eocene epoch, from a small, multi-toed ungulate into larger, single-toed animals. All extant species are in the genus Equus, which originated in North America. Equidae belongs to the order Perissodactyla, which includes the extant tapirs and rhinoceros, and several extinct families. It is more specifically grouped within the superfamily Equoidea, the only other family being the extinct Palaeotheriidae.

The term equid refers to any member of this family, including any equine.

Tautavel Man refers to the archaic humans which—from approximately 550,000 to 400,000 years ago—inhabited the Caune de l’Arago, a limestone cave in Tautavel, France. They are generally grouped as part of a long and highly variable lineage of transitional morphs which inhabited the Middle Pleistocene of Europe, and would eventually evolve into the Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis or H. sapiens neanderthalensis). They have been variably assigned to either H. (s.?) heidelbergensis, or as a European subspecies of H. erectus as H. e. tautavelensis. The skull is reconstructed based on the specimens Arago 21 and 47 (probably male), and it is, to a degree, more characteristic of what might be considered a typical H. erectus (sensu stricto) morphology than a typical H. heidelbergensis morphology. The brain capacity is 1,166 cc. They seem to have had an overall robust skeleton. Average height may have been 166 cm (5 ft 5 in).

The Caune de l'Arago opens on a cliffside 80 m (260 ft) above a river, overlooking the Tautavel plain, with a plateau above, and mountainous terrain to the sides. During and after human occupation, the area swung from temperate and humid forestland, to cold and dry steppeland. Stratigraphically, humans are present from beds Q–C. Bed G, dating to roughly 455,000 years old during a forested event, has yielded the most remains. They seem to have hunted a variety of animals, including red deer, fallow deer, argali, tahr, horse, reindeer, beaver, and the extinct narrow-nosed rhinoceros, among others. They made Acheulean stone tools, but mainly produced smaller retouched tools such as scrapers, rather than more iconic macro-tools such as bifaces (hand axes). In beds G and F, they may have been practicing ritual cannibalism. Evidence of fire is absent until bed C (400,000 years ago).

Perissodactyla (/pəˌrɪsoʊˈdæktɪlə/, from Ancient Greek περισσός, perissós 'odd' and δάκτυλος, dáktylos 'finger, toe'), or odd-toed ungulates, is an order of ungulates. The order includes about 17 living species divided into three families: Equidae (horses, asses, and zebras), Rhinocerotidae (rhinoceroses), and Tapiridae (tapirs). They typically have reduced the weight-bearing toes to three or one of the five original toes, though tapirs retain four toes on their front feet. The nonweight-bearing toes are either present, absent, vestigial, or positioned posteriorly. By contrast, artiodactyls (even-toed ungulates) bear most of their weight equally on four or two (an even number) of the five toes: their third and fourth toes. Another difference between the two is that perissodactyls digest plant cellulose in their intestines, rather than in one or more stomach chambers as artiodactyls, with the exception of Suina, do.

The order was considerably more diverse in the past, with notable extinct groups including the brontotheres, palaeotheres, chalicotheres, and the paraceratheres, with the paraceratheres including the largest known land mammals to have ever existed.

A feral horse is a free-roaming horse of domesticated stock. As such, a feral horse is not a wild animal in the sense of an animal without domesticated ancestors. However, some populations of feral horses are managed as wildlife, and these horses often are popularly called "wild" horses. Feral horses are descended from domestic horses that strayed, escaped, or were deliberately released into the wild and remained to survive and reproduce there. Away from humans, over time, these animals' patterns of behavior revert to behavior more closely resembling that of wild horses. Some horses that live in a feral state but may be occasionally handled or managed by humans, particularly if privately owned, are referred to as "semi-feral".

Feral horses live in groups called a herd, band, harem, or mob. Feral horse herds, like those of wild horses, are usually made up of small harems led by a dominant mare, containing additional mares, their foals, and immature horses of both sexes. There is usually one herd stallion, though occasionally a few less-dominant males may remain with the group. Horse "herds" in the wild are best described as groups of several small bands who share the same territory. Bands are normally on the small side, as few as three to five animals, but sometimes over a dozen. The makeup of bands shift over time as young animals are driven out of the band they were born into and join other bands, or as young stallions challenge older males for dominance. However, in a closed ecosystem (such as the isolated refuges in which most feral horses live today), to maintain genetic diversity, the minimum size for a sustainable free-roaming horse or burro population is 150–200 animals.