Yaller Dogs And Fishhook Tails


I was watching one of my bedtime documentaries around ten o’clock last night when I came across something fascinating. It was called “The Search For The first Dog,” a National Geographic presentation. There is a type of wild dog that runs the woods in North and South Carolina called a “Yaller Dog,” which of course means “Yellow.” They are a very light tan to yellow color on the back and sides with cream colored undersides – elegantly long and lean in the body and legs. Their ears are fairly large and “prick” style, and their tail is called a “fishhook tail.” Obviously it curls stiffly over their back. They have been there as long as white people have, and were thought to be native to the area. They undoubtedly came across the land bridge with their favorite groups of Native Americans, however, for their genetic links go to Asia and the Middle East.

The earliest dogs are thought to have “bred themselves” so to speak from a small type of wolf that was native to Asia and the Middle East, while following the human hunters. These dogs are neither as large nor as fierce as a wolf, so they fit well into the camp follower lifestyle. That would have been around 14,000 Before Present. The oldest dog of that type lives in the mountains of Papua New Guinea, also thought to have followed humans there. The National Geographic video stated that these dogs in New Guinea are thought to be the beginning of all modern dogs. The New Guinea group are called “Singing Dogs” for their light, high pitched howl which they do rather than barking. The sound when they all vocalize together is very much like singing, actually, and is beautiful. They live wild in New Guinea and are sometimes befriended, fed and petted by the people or raised outright from pups in the villages. They like human scraps, but they also are quite capable of hunting small game for themselves. Like wolves, all of these dogs run in packs.

Three other groups with ancient blood lines are in Australia, Israel and India. In India they are called Pariah Dogs, and are more short-legged with variable color patterns including black. One I saw even had flopped ears like a Fox Terrier, but most have prick ears and the “fishhook” tail. They have lived for thousands of years on the trash heaps of Indian villages, especially with a cultural group called the Santhal and the dogs are called after that name, “Santhal dogs.” That tribal group are known to have taken care of them and bred them, but they are scavengers on the garbage heaps more than pets. I expect they probably formed the function of killing and eating rodents for the village as the early domesticated cats did in the Middle East, and to raise an alarm for intruders.

None of the ethnic groups except those in Israel were mentioned to have fully domesticated these earliest dogs or used them for hunting. In Israel the Bedouin use them to herd and protect their sheep flocks. They aren’t very large, but they are feisty enough to chase off wolves. There was one fighting scene in the documentary, and the two dogs, while having very little bulk at all, were so energetic and fierce in their charges that the other dog was beaten back.

The Australian dog, of course, is the Dingo, and is thought to have been brought across the water by Asian groups several thousand years later than the 14,000BP date, and long after the Aboriginal people themselves migrated there. I was watching a documentary on the Aboriginal people and the article said that while they sometimes pet the dingoes, they don’t feed them. The Dingoes live on the slower small marsupial mammals which are native to Australia. Like all of these ancient dog types, they are being interbred with domestic dogs to a degree that has caused a number of scientists to attempt to keep some of them genetically pure. The article said that the modern day dingo is about 70% interbred with modern breeds. The Australian group that brought the Dingoes couldn’t have been the oldest inhabitants, because it is thought that dogs developed much later than that.

I have included this snippet from Wikipedia about the Aboriginal people there because they are fascinating to look at and are very old. They are quite dark like modern Africans, but their facial bones look very different. That’s because they are 70,000 years old. Wow!! I think if we want to know what some of the first Homo Sapiens looked like we should study them. There are some other people of the same type in the Asian regions near Australia, also. The racial group they belong to is called Australoid. There is a great photograph in Wikipedia of three Australoid men from Bathhurst Island, dated 1939. They are broadly and strongly built both in body and facial structure. They don’t closely resemble any other group, except some others in widely separated locations that also go back many tens of thousands of years. I am thinking of the Ainu of Japan and Russia, who date back to that time period, and some pictures I saw of a group in India with the very dark skin and broad face and features. The Ainu, however, are white and are said to be “hairy” like Caucasoid people, but they are classed as a race of their own. Ainu is a race, in other words. They are not Mongoloid, or related to the Chinese and Japanese, though they live nearby. The Wikipedia article said that they have intermarried a goodly amount with Japanese Mongoloid people, however, and are losing some of their cultural and physical characteristics. As for the original Australians, see the Wikipedia article below.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_Australians

Indigenous Australians
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Indigenous Australians are members of groups that existed in Australia and surrounding islands prior to European colonisation. The phrase is therefore somewhat broad in scope, including such ethnically diverse groups as Tiwi people, Noongar people, and Torres Strait Islanders, and does not generally imply a close relationship or common origin of all included groups.

The relationship between modern Indigenous Australians and Australia's earliest inhabitants remains a matter of scholarly debate. The earliest definite human remains found to date in Australia are those of Mungo Man, which have been dated at about 40,000 years old, but comparison of the mitochondrial DNA with that of ancient and modern Aborigines indicates that Mungo Man is unrelated to any modern Indigenous Australians.[2] The time of arrival of humans in Australia is also a matter of debate among researchers, with estimates dating back as far as 125,000 years ago.[3]

Recent findings indicate that Indigenous Australians are probably descendants of the first modern humans to migrate out of Africa to Asia, roughly 70,000 years ago,[4] arriving in Australia around 50,000 years ago.[5][6] The Torres Strait Islanders are indigenous to the Torres Strait Islands, which are at the northernmost tip of Queensland near Papua New Guinea. The term "Aboriginal" is traditionally applied to only the indigenous inhabitants of mainland Australia and Tasmania, along with some of the adjacent islands, i.e., the "first peoples". Indigenous Australians is an inclusive term used when referring to both Aboriginal and Torres Strait islanders.

Strictly speaking, Aborigine is the noun and Aboriginal the adjectival form; however, the latter is often also employed as a noun. Use of either Aborigine(s) or Aboriginal(s) to refer to individuals has acquired negative connotations in some sectors of the community, and it is generally regarded as insensitive and even offensive.[15][16] The more acceptable and correct expression is Aboriginal Australians or Aboriginal people. The term Indigenous Australians, which also includes Torres Strait Islander peoples, has found increasing acceptance, particularly since the 1980s.[17]