Despite their hospitable and open-minded nature, citizens of Equestria never had much contact with the zebras inhabiting the endless expanses of the Sun’s Eye desert to the west. This is not due to hostilities or fear of one another, as the zebras are as welcoming as their neighbours to the east, but simply a matter of distance – with the countless dangers lurking alongside the road, few feel the need to travel to the Sun’s Eye without a very good reason. Even the Night Guards’ eyes do not extend beyond the dunes, as they choose to limit their focus on Equestria beneath. Thus, the only sources of information about the zebra culture are the princesses with their ancient memory and the occasional adventurer or explorer. The only member of their kind available for personal questioning would have been the exile Zecora, who has politely but empathically declined the author’s request to do so.
According to the Elemental Theory, the zebras are the children of earth and bone. While their physique mostly resembles the one of earth walkers, there are a number of notable differences: they possess a dusky skin, dark eyes and black hair, all of these robust and ideally suited for the merciless environment of their homelands. Stripe-like patches of white extend across their entire bodies, skin and hair, that flow and mingle into each other to form complex patterns across their entire exterior. For the longest time, those patterns were considered a kind of tribal war paint; Equestrians have only recently discovered that they are in fact part of a zebra’s natural epidermis and most likely a physical manifestation of their race's own, inborn magic - like the wings of a pegasus, the strong legs of an earth walker and so on.
Zebras, like dragons and griffons, have been the subject of elitist contempt and racial slander throughout the course of history. While the enlightened modern viewer will understand that their cultural achievements easily equal or even surpass those of any of the Equestrian races, they often faced suspicion and hostility. Their ways are alien to anything known to earth walkers, unicorns or pegasi and thus have often been rejected as supposedly primitive, uncivilized or savage. In contrary to the dragons, who do not take kindly to this kind of insult, the zebras have always been above such petty squabbles.
Even long before the nation of Equestria was founded, there was a blooming culture in the middle of the Sun’s Eye. While the ancestors of the earth walkers were still scavenging for food in the swamps and forests of their homeland, zebras crafted tools and brasswork of intricate beauty; they learned and used the alchemical properties of countless of plants collected in every ecosystem neighbouring the Sun’s Eye, and even in the heart of the desert itself. While unicorns were still establishing the first few basic traits of civilization, zebras lived in fully developed communities with an efficient concept of labour and a stable hierarchy, at peace with nature and each other.
The heart and soul of zebrican culture is their religion. Instead of praying to the Elements or alicorns like the first Equestrians did, they worship the earth itself as an inspirited, transcendental being and the mother of their race. As a result, their species has always aimed to live in harmony with the world surrounding them. They travel across the desert in small tribes, often consisting of only a few dozen people. They dwell in tents made from the skin and bones of dead animals, as they refuse to harm a living creature for any reason but self-defence.
Each tribe is led by two chieftains – one male, one female – who govern over their people with counsel and advice. They do not give orders, but are so highly respected that their word essentially holds the same quality. When a chieftain dies their tribe will mourn for a month; after that, a ritual celebration will be held in which every member is asked to perform a number of challenges to prove their skill and cunning in many different fields. The shamans will observe the celebration and elect the worthiest contestant as the new chieftain on its final day.
Shamans also represent the next step in the social latter: they are the spiritual guides and lorekeepers of the tribes; they counsel the chieftains, perform rituals and try to see the future in the sand and the rare clouds in the desert sky. In contrary to the chieftains in their splendid, cumbersome garments made of hundreds of pieces of embellished jewellery, shamans usually wear little to no clothing. Instead, they paint runes of clay onto their bodies that overlap with their natural stripes to form a pattern so complex that the sheer sight can be confusing to the eye, and often dye their hair into the same black-and-white fashion as their skin.
Shamans live in reclusion from the rest of their tribe. They are a mystery even to other zebras and guard their knowledge jealously. Only rarely do they choose new apprentices, and even rarer does an apprentice choose a shaman. Aside from that, they interact with the rest of the tribe only through advising the chieftains or by curing ailments and diseases.
Much and more has been speculated about the shamans’ mystical powers, but little of that has been scientifically proven as of yet. It is beyond any doubt that they possess some magical ability, but to what extent? Zebra tribesmen claim that they can bring rain with song and dance, summon water from beneath the desert sand, see into the future and communicate with the creatures of the wild. They are also responsible for sending the souls of the dead back to the Mother Earth, where they may become one with her once again. It is the author’s belief that most of their ‘magic’ is simply a profound knowledge of the fauna and geology of the Sun’s Eye, which they use to further their tribe’s wellbeing and their own fame in the process.
The last and largest social class in zebra society are the workers, most notable of them the herders. Each tribe is accompanied by a massive herd of animals – mostly goats and camels – that provide them with milk and meat. Fur and bones are used for building tents; the latter also serving as a raw material for weapons, tools and jewellery. The zebras’ religious doctrine of never killing a living creature (as mentioned above) forces them to wait for their animals to die a natural death; as a result, the materials harvested are all of inferior quality and the amount of livestock needed is greatly increased. This forces the tribes to travel swifter and more frequently, as their large herds will quickly strip any area they settle in of whatever meagre plant life the desert has to offer.
The author understands that the zebrican habit of eating meat would appear barbaric in the eyes of an Equestrian; it is to be noted that the tribes do only what they need to survive. They have developed ways to integrate rudiments of agriculture into their nomadic lifestyle, but the amount of grain and millet they manage to wrest from the dry ground simply does not suffice to sustain them. Because of that, herding is a highly respected task that many zebras choose to pursue.
Aside from that, they do not have professions in the Equestrian sense of the word. There are no tailors, smiths or woodworkers. Every family crafts what they need for themselves. Of course, a gifted weaver will often be asked to make clothing for their neighbours, who will trade pieces of cloth with whatever they have to offer that is particularly fine. So while zebras possess no known currency, bartering within a tribe is a common practice.
As a final note: the warriors of the Sun’s Eye desert are at the centre of many legends that Equestrians tell each other of their cousins to the west. The unspectacular truth is that there is no such thing as a zebra warrior; an extremely peaceful race since ancient times, war is a concept completely alien to them. The famous depictions of wild desert fighters in their colourful garments, wearing wooden pearls and feathers, armed with shields and spears and covered in war paint are mostly folklore – most adult zebras possess a weapon, usually a spear with a tip made of bone, but use it only to defend their tribes against certain wild animals as a kind of ragtag militia.
Unicorn archives hold too many false beliefs and biased rumours about this old and venerable species as it is. No incorrect image – however romantically appealing – can be allowed to stand. In accepting our neighbours as what they truly are lies the first step to what will certainly one day be a fruitful and peaceful relationship. Perhaps future generations will finally come to understand the many things that we still fail to see in our noble neighbours to the west.