Talk:Ancient dog breeds

Pharoah Hounds and ibizan hounds
Any info on these two?

Both Pharoah Hounds and Ibizian Hounds were tested and shown to be essentially modern. This is not surprising since they are both "reconstructions", derived from intercrosses of the very few, if any, surviving members of the original breeds with a hefty dose of Greyhound and other modern breeds. JRBrown 19:53, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Surprising?
Why is it surprising that those six pairs of breeds are closely related? They look a lot alike and have nearby (or the same) countries of origin. Or am I misreading it? --Joelmills 21:51, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Is this article really appropriate?
It seems to be a summary of a single research paper, presented as if that paper is the one and only ultimate authority on an encyclopedia topic. I think maybe we should consider merging to Origin of the domestic dog. Mango juice talk 18:21, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Are the Correct Breeds listed?
Glancing at the original article (which seems the only one dealing with this specific topic), the group of 14 seems to include Irish Wolfhounds in place of Akita Inu, which are not in the study. The Akita could well be in that group and perhaps it has been shown to be in subsequent work. The I.W. is very like the Great Dane in its profile in the chart accompanying the original article, and in its modern form is significantly descended from this breed and from the Scottish Deerhound, a breed not in the study. The methodology of determining dividing lines between the four groups is unclear. Even so, the relationship with the I.W., the G.D. and possibly the S.D. with the ancient DNA is intriguing, because they are European breeds, unlike the others mentioned. collieuk 12:44, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
 * The listing of the 14 breeds is derived from the results shown in Parker et al Figure 3A (the first line, labelled "K=2" ) and 3B. Only the 14 breeds at the left of the figures have significant wolf-like clustering (yellow bars). This group includes the Akita Inu (which the paper refers to simply as "Akita") but not the Irish Wolfhound or Great Dane, both of which show more "herding-type" structure (green bars in Figure 3A, bottom line). - JRBrown (talk) 00:21, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

The Cladogram
Why does the cladogram show only 9 dog breeds, but the gallery shows 14? Is there a way to make the cladogram complete, or does the paper not provide the necessary information? Svyatoslav (talk) 22:45, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The cladogram is a reformatted version of Figure 2 from the Parker et. al. paper. Data for all the breeds tested is presented in the paper's supplementary figures, but only these 9 can be put into a statistically-supported tree. The relationship between the remaining breeds is not clear enough, in this study, to provide more than a tentative cladogram. - JRBrown (talk) 00:00, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

A consideration ...
Most ancient dog breeds can be traced back a few thousand years, and many are tracked backwards from western European areas to the eastern areas of the world which is now Turkey. The Anatolian Shepard history is thought to go back 6 thousand years! I would hope that these studies would include this lesser known breed. I would suspect that many suprises would be revealed. BrianLCooper (talk) 15:05, 12 February 2012 (UTC).

Why is the Canaan Dog not included?
Arn't Canaan dogs an ancient breed? Why are they not included in this article? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canaan_Dog — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.255.9.32 (talk) 23:14, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Potential Article Improvements:
As an article about ancient dog breeds, a section on the primary morphological changes that began to differentiate dogs from wolves could be added, this would help detail what characteristics really defined the ancient dog (such as shortening of the snout or the shrinking of brain cavity).

Another addition that could potentially be made to improve the article would be a section elaborating on the specific genotypic differences and similarities between ancient dogs and their wolf ancestors mentioned in the introduction of the article along with an updated/more complete cladogram.

A third alteration to the article could be the addition of a section on the behavior of the ancient dog that favored its coevolution and mutualistic relationship with humans. This would offer more insight into the origin of the traits we see so exaggerated in modern dogs.

Amrania.1 (talk) 03:55, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Improvements needed
This Article expresses surprise that genetic analysis may not back up the categorisation of some dogs by the American Kennel Club, an organisation spawned by the 19th century fascination with separating dogs into genetically insular breeds. The closely related breeds mentioned are beyond obvious and their links usually well documented: If the research were to show that Whippet was in fact descended from the Mastiff then that would be worth writing about. Whilst some of the analysis on the origins of dogs is worthwhile, I agree with Mangojuice that it would be better merged into Origin of the domestic dog. Cavalryman V31 (talk) 06:04, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The Alaskan Malamute and Siberian Husky, two breeds (more probably types in their native lands) of identical function, very similar appearance, separated by the Bering Strait and both kept by peoples who live in the arctic circle
 * The Collie and Shetland Sheepdog, again two breeds (or types) of identical function, very similar appearance, from the one country
 * The Whippet is descended from the Greyhound
 * The Bernese Mountain Dog and Greater Swiss Mountain Dog are both breeds/types of identical function and were only separated into distinct breeds by Albert Heim when encouraging his countrymen to revive the type
 * It is a very well documented that the Bullmastiff was bred from the Mastiff, through infusions of the Old English Bulldog at a known ration of 60% Mastiff to 40% Bulldog.

Merge Proposal
This article has been based on one research paper by Parker in 2004, as has been pointed out above by Mango back in 2009. The research by Larson in 2012 shows that these breeds are not ancient and that they have simply been less mixed with other breeds during the Victorian period because of their remote geographic location. I propose that this article be merged with Dog breeds, and simply stating this. William Harris •   talk •   04:15, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
 * This matter has now been actioned as notified under Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Dogs. Regards, William Harris  •   talk •   21:45, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Ancient breed dogs was a term once used for a group of dogs by the American Kennel Club, but no longer. These breeds were referred to as ancient breeds, as opposed to modern breeds, because historically it was once believed that they had origins dating back over 500 years. It was later found that some were not as old as thought, challenging the ancient breed assumption.>ref>