Another study debunks the Konik myth

Unfortunately, many still believe in the Konik myth. According to the narrative, the Konik allegedly descends from the last wild horses of Poland kept at the game park of Zamosc that were allegedly donated to local farmers who bred them into their domestic horse stock. This story is very unlikely and goes back to only one sentence in a historic source of very dubious accuracy. Closely tied to the Konik myth is the usage of the word "tarpan" for the European or western Eurasian wild horse. Many authors uncritically adopted speculations from other authors and portrayed them as facts in their own works, and so the myth became very persistent. The narrative became: "The tarpan was the European wild horse, and the Konik is the descendant of the tarpan".

The recent paper of Lovasz, Fages and Amrhein from last year examines the history of the word "tarpan" in scientific literature, and also the history and origin of the Konik myth. The study can be found here. 

The idea that the Konik descends from Polands last wild horses goes back to a notion by Julius Brincken in his 1826 work. He mentions in one sentence that those last wild horses were donated to local farmers of the Bilgoraj region and bred to domestic horses of that region. The Konik, so claim later authors in the 20th century, is said to descend from these hybrids. However, it is by no means certain that those horses at the game park of Zamosc were wild horses. Most likely they were hybrids (see here). Also, Brincken's work is not credible as it includes many inaccuracies and fabrications (see van Vuure, 2014). Even if Brincken's notion is correct, it is unlikely that the farmers tolerated a great influence of wild horses in their highly bred farm horses. And even if they did, the subsequent story of those hybrids is not documented. It is not known if those horse lineages, if they would have existed, continued into the 20th century when hippologists became interested in the rural horses of that region which were called Panje horses (the name Konik was coined later, in the 1920s and 1930s) and it is also not documented that the Konik itself descends from those purported lineages. Yes, it is true that the Konik has the same coat colour as the late European wild horse (black dun, also called grullo or mouse dun). But that is the result of artificial selection. The original stock of the Konik in the 1920s included many colours, black dun was only one of them. It was subsequent selective breeding in the middle and later half of the 20th century that created the now mostly black dun Konik (see Jeziersky & Jaworski 2008). 

Thus, the Konik myth is a romantic story but not based on solid evidence. It is merely based on one sentence in a very questionable historic source and even if this sentence is accurate, there are many other variables in the equation (did the farmers tolerate wild influence in their highly bred horses? Did those lineages continue into the 20th century? Does the Konik really descend from those lineages, if they existed at all?). Some want the Konik to be a wild horse, but this pony is rather a black dun robust landrace (nothing more and nothing less), not a recent wild horse descendant. That does not diminish its value in landscape conservation, but I wish a wider variety of horse breeds would be used for that purpose. 

I wonder why still so many believe in the Konik myth. Horse breeding seems to be somewhat romanticized and connected to emotions, the Sorraia origin story or the Exmoor pony story for example are not based on reliable facts either. 

Literature 

Lovasz, Fages & Amrhein: Konik, Tarpan, European wild horse: An origin story with conservation implications. 2021. 

van Vuure: On the origin of the Polish konik and its relation to Dutch nature management. 2014. 

Jeziersky & Jaworski: Der polnische Konik. 2008.