The myth of ancient origins

June 27, 2021 0 Comments

This post first appeared on October 23, 2012
If there is one thing that is consistent among purebred animals, it must be the desire for ancient – and preferably exotic – origins. The latest and greatest may be desirable with high tech equipment, but we seem to prefer our horse and dog breeds well-aged. In the past I have enjoyed giving a presentation that pokes a little fun about breed mythologies. I am fortunate that my audiences have, so far at least, all been good sports, because this can be a rather touchy subject for a lot of people.

That is unfortunate, because many of the accepted stories about the origins of various breeds have not held up to closer scrutiny. As geneticists continue to analyze different populations, it is becoming clear that some populations are not remnants of an ancient group, but rather relatively modern attempts to recreate those animals – or in some cases, a romantic notion of what those animals might have been like. For those that do not have a strong attachment to the original stories, the truth can be far more interesting.

That is certainly true for the research being done by the Village Dog Genetic Diversity Project headed up by scientists at Cornell University. They have been collecting samples from hundreds of semi-feral dogs in remote areas in Africa. Their findings have been somewhat surprising.

African village dogs are not a mixture of modern breeds but have directly descended from an ancestral pool of indigenous dogs

Meanwhile, modern breeds that have been thought to descend from African populations, like the Pharaoh Hounds (above, photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons) and the Rhodesian Ridgeback, clustered with Western breeds.

These results are consistent with [previous results] showing that Salukis, Afghan hounds, and Basenjis cluster with ancient, non-European breeds, while Pharaoh hounds and Rhodesian ridgebacks do not. Although this coarse sampling (3 countries) is suitable for detecting truly indigenous versus reconstituted ancestry in putatively African breeds, analysis including village dogs from more regions will be necessary to better localize the ancestral origins of these breeds.

What is interesting is that two of the three modern breeds noted as clustering with the non-European dogs – Salukis and Basenjis – still allow crosses to newly imported stock.

This study is reminiscent of the one done a few years ago on the origins of the Arabian Horse. The author of that study, “Speculations on the origin of the Arabian Horse breed“, found persuasive evidence that the modern Arabian was as much a Victorian construct as it was a uniquely pure, ancient breed.

Iwona Głażewska

These results permit formulating the hypothesis that the Arabian horse breed was created from many different breeds and populations, and the concept of breed purity, might refer, at most, to the present population with a history that does not exceed two hundred years

Obviously there are not many ideas more scandalous in equine circles than Arabians being created “from many different breeds and populations” with a history that does not exceed 200 hundred years (ie., 1809). To imagine that carefully preserved purebreds are mongrels, while feral dogs bred without any human selection in the streets of Africa are free from outside “taint” and “pure” descendants of ancient ancestors, really does turn what we think we know about our animal companions on its head.

By lkathman