American Dog Breeds Hail From Pre-Columbian Times

Researchers find limited European influence on dog breeds native to America.

The tangle of questions regarding the ancestry of dog breeds indigenous to the Americas is slowly unraveling.

Unlike the poodles that populate many a household, native American dog breed lineages originated from East Asian canines, with little genetic influence from European breeds—formerly an open question, according to a new study.

Native breeds include the Canadian Eskimo dog, the Inuit sled dog, the Greenland dog, the Chihuahua, the Xoloitzcuintli (Mexican hairless dog), and the Peruvian Perro Sín Pelo (Peruvian hairless dog).

It was already known that many dog breeds are descended from canines living in the Americas during pre-Columbian times—or the period before European colonization and influence.

When humans crossed the Bering Land Bridge, the strip of land connecting Alaska and Russia, about 15,000 to 10,000 years ago, they brought their dogs with them. [...] nationalgeographic.com