American Dogs – Where Did They Come From?

By Amy Fernandez

America’s native canines are sort of like the dinosaurs: they were all over the place; then they suddenly disappeared. The prehistoric dog world was similar to how it is now. From the Arctic Circle to Tierra Del Fuego; no matter where you went, the place was overrun with dogs of every shape and size. Backed up by plenty of eyewitness accounts and all kinds of archeological footnotes, that fact has fired up the imaginations of artists, writers, and scientific experts. It gave us people such as Jack London and George Caitlin, and it definitely livened up the creaky archeology business, but it never got us any closer to answering those basic questions. Where did they come from, and where did they go?

There have been plenty of theories about the first question. Vikings? Ancient Chinese explorers? Extraterrestrials? Maybe they were here all along. No reason to rule it out. After all, the wolf to dog transformation wasn’t a one-off event, and America never had a wolf shortage. The exact mechanics of the process we still don’t know, but it’s well established that the dog resulted from multiple domestication events. Contrary to conventional wisdom and generations of science textbooks, humans had nothing to do with getting that show on the road. Apparently, it just happens like some chemical reaction. Mix humans and canids; add a dash of mutual opportunism; and, sooner or later, that science project will commence. Possible… but still just another theory.

Bioarcheaology finally ended that debate. Just like humans, dogs arrived from Siberia after the last Ice Age. From there, they proliferated and diversified into a vast Canine Empire over the next 10,000 years. That still leaves the question of where they went. Endless artistic, religious, and cultural references confirmed their long, chummy relationship with the human population. Basically, when European’s arrived 500 years ago, America’s dog scene mirrored what had been going on over there—except for the totally different gene pool, of course. There were just as many, they were just as diversified, and equally well adapted to a variety cultures and conditions, but they all carried that unique genetic signature inherited from their Siberian ancestors.

Short URL: https://caninechronicle.com/?p=148923

Posted by Alex on Aug 16 2018. Filed under Current Articles, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.