The concept of purebreeding or closed studbooks is relatively young, much, much younger than all of our old landrace breeds, regardless of species.

It started with the work of Robert Bakewell in the 18th Century, and the control of sires. Bakewell had no real knowledge of scientific genetics, and his (dog) breeding program was largely limited to the control of sires (made easier by enclosures) and the admonition that "like begats like" and that success was to be found by "breeding the best to the best". The first stud book to document the breeding of animals was the General Stud Book of 1791 which tracked a small pool of racing horses. A stud book for Shorthorn Cattle was produced in 1822. The English Thoroughbred shows us the classical "new method" for breeding highly specialised breeds. Perusing an available, large body of local females already exhibiting one or two traits aimed for in the planned breed, sires of other breeds are added bringing in those traits still lacking or enhancing what is already there. In the case of the English Thoroughbred Barb, Turkoman and Arabian sires were used on local agile and swift mares such as the Irish Hobby. Offspring was rigorously selected on the racecourse. The English Thoroughbred is thus actually one of the very first engineered breeds.

All of our old breeds however evolved differently. The history section points out the relevant basic environmental and geographical causes behind the development of what we call "landraces" or "country breeds". Animals living in a specific, often secluded, region will breed at random, yet are subject to natural selection. They adapt to their region and often show first signs of becoming a recognizable breed long before being completely domesticated.

When the people living in that region then domesticate these animals, they will only keep such animals which best suit the purposes they are being kept for. Over the generations an even higher specialised adaption will come about within the geographical boundaries, which neither the relevant animals nor the humans keeping them commonly leave. In essence this is the beginning of basic pure breeding and of every known ancient breed.

These landraces have one thing in common, regardless of species and regardless of country or continent of origin: the main selection goal is to perfectly suit them to the work they do or the purpose they are kept for. This fact cannot be stressed enough.

The extremer the geographical/climatic situation and the work were, the more likely it is, that such a breed would be bred pure, as it is most improbable that other breeds would be endowed with such highly specialised traits. Breeders tend to notice this even without modern knowledge of genetics and soon become careful about breeding to animals too far removed regarding their traits.

Regarding the Turkoman horses and their various local strains or - better - breeds, it has become quite clear when looking closely at history and accounts rendered of the Turkoman horse group, that their breeders bred them with little outside influence. The whole group of Turkoman horses already were highly geared to the region they lived in, to the nomadic lifestyle of their owners and the work they had to do under the climatic and political conditions in evidence. There are accounts telling us of raids into Southern, Western and Eastern regions during which the Turkoman tribes also acquired and abducted horses of other, much farther removed breeds not of Turkmenian stock. These practically always proved to be inferior to their own horses. It is not likely that they were bred into herds much better adapted to the Turan flat and nomadic use.

Most renowned among the Turkoman were the "warhorses", breeds belonging to the various nomad tribes which lived off raiding settlements and caravans travelling the silk road. These breeds, most outstanding the horses owned by the extremely bellicose and aggressive Teke tribes, needed to be faster and more enduring over long distances than any other breed they might meet during the raids on the opposing side, they needed to have a superior strength, great courage and the ability to independantly work towards the successful raid and getaway afterwards. Such - often polygenetic - traits, especially when selected for by relatively slow but achieving assortative mating, take centuries to be fixed in a breed and can be easily lost. It is even less likely that non-Turkoman horses were bred into any of the warhorse strains.

What did happen however were occasional judicious outcrosses to other Turkoman breeds and breed strains.

We have to realize in this respect, that each major tribe was composed of subtribes, 42 were noted e.g. for the Teke. These subtribes themselves consisted of family groups. Each of these families had their own herds, and the subtribes their own strains of a breed. These strains often were of distinctive and different type or subtype, a good, hard look at the foundation horses of the modern Akhal Teke, but also at old photographs of Turkoman horses show us the quite enormous diversity achieved, even though the genetic breed base is the same.

Marriage, trade and raids between tribes, subtribes and families resulted in horses changing from one "pocket" or "gene group" into another. If the horses brought or stolen into a new group proved to be of acceptable quality, they were kept and of course also bred. It is known that not just the newly acquired horses were first tested, their offspring also was closely compared to the quality of the main herd, before acquisitions were allowed to stay within the gene pool.

A close look at the names of quite a few horses, which made it into the first Akhal Teke studbook, show that either the horses themselves belonged to different subtribes of the Teke, or even completely different Turkoman tribes, or they derived from such ancestors. The dam of famous Melekush, Oras Niyas Karadashly, belonged to the Karadashly tribe, which is not Teke. A mare called Kaib Karadashly was covered by Melekush and foaled a later sire. Mele Khadshi Nur once belonged to the Yamoud, and many of the early horses featuring the word "Sakar" in their names actually came from the tribe Sakar. It is quite clear, that even the original founding stock in the first Akhal Teke studbook did not consist of Akhal Teke only, it consisted of Turkoman horses of various tribal origins, the majority of which were Teke and Akhal Teke.

This kind of breeding made and still makes eminent sense: it is a healthy way to prevent inbreeding depression and genetic drift, it ensures that traits are not lost due outbreeding to non-related breeds with different adaptions and as per definition of where purebreeding comes from, it still is valid purebreeding.

To modern closed-studbook breeders, not just Akhal Teke breeders, such outcrossing and interbreeding is however anathema. Even though these occasional influences "at the fringes" of a landrace's immediate geographical sphere or its interaction with strains and gene pools within the same main breed body, was never uncommon, it goes against their grain, they go into full denial. This disregards the fact, that every modern breed with a breeding history going further back than the 18th century has been bred in precisely this manner, often enduring for many centuries without trouble and no less pure for it.

The problem modern breeders have with the concept of purity among the age-old country breeds is the high fragmentation we have seen since the concept of closed studbooks was invented. Where the former, practical breeders of landraces simply discerned one main breed and its types and subtypes, modern breeders tend to see many smaller, separate breeds instead. In fact, the base for this thinking is human racism evolving to general prominence and acceptance at roughly the same time Darwin and Mendel laid the foundation of genetics.

In our age this has reached the highest grade of perversion among dog breeders, where one and the same breed bred across a stretch of land with multiple borders usually is chopped up into 3-4 or even more separate breeds, each with a closed studbook, an own standard and consequently also a dire future of needless inbreeding of a small secluded gene pool each. Due to the much faster alteration of generations among dogs, the negative results of this artificial approach to purity, especially on these landraces, are today felt across the world and force many cynologists to take a second look at faulty past practises and misconceptions. As we speak, they are rediscovering the country breeds' version of pure breeding and taking first, much needed steps to re-assess where they took the wrong turn.

The distrust of "foreign blood" infusion among modern purebreds breeders is however not only largely based on antiquated breeding science, but also on recent engineering of completely new breeds. Commonly completely unrelated crosses are made to do this. It takes many generations to consolidate these new breeds, even just one or two outcrosses may destroy prior work in them. It is this modern breeders immediately think when justifying their rigid methods of closed studbook breeding.

However, this cannot be compared to what naturally happens with landraces over long stretches of time. Especially when reviewing what breed (strains) the original breeding stock of the but recently so called Akhal Teke consisted of, breeders should once again come to acknowledge where modern breeding has gone astray regarding the concept of purity.