Primal race

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As Urrassen are hypothetical early Livestock Breeds understood of which today's races are directly descended.

Historical

Attempts to systematize the diverse manifestations of living things are old. For example, Aristotle in his work Historia animalium in the 4th century BC Such systematizations already made. For a long time, however, it was assumed that species were a creation designed by God and therefore immutable.

In the 18th century, Carl von Linné still assumed unchangeable species; modern taxonomy goes back to him . Linné also considered the taxonomic classification of the domestic dog . He called it canis familiaris and placed it next to the wolf canis lupus , which - from today's perspective - suggests a close relationship, but was not interpreted as such by Linnaeus, but merely as a similarity. Today, with the name Canis lupus familiaris, the affiliation to the species Canis lupus (wolf) is taxonomically represented. Since Linnaeus assumed the immutability of species, he did not look for lines of descent; Primeval races, as they were postulated later, did not appear in his system. It was only with the realization that living things change and that neither species nor races are immutable did the search for lineages begin. The first primal race theories emerged.

Assumed original breeds of the domestic dog

There are several theories about primitive races; the most important goes back to the cynologist Theophil Studer and represents five hypothetical primal races. It was formulated at the same time as Ludwig Wilser introduced the term Homo primigenius for a hypothetical "prehistoric man" into paleoanthropology (cf. archaic Homo sapiens ).

Hypothetical pedigree according to Studer (1901) refuted by DNA analyzes

In 1901, Studer postulated a Canis ferus - a dingo -like wild canid - from which he assumed that all dogs were descended from him. This Canis ferus was then domesticated as Canis poutiantini, the original dog . These original dogs would later have developed into the following three original breeds:

  • Canis leineri : the hypothetical ancestral form of the greyhound and the Irish wolfhound
  • Canis intermedius : the hypothetical ancestral form of the hunting dogs
  • Canis matris-optimae : the hypothetical parent form of the sheepdogs

According to Studer, another primal breed was created by crossing the primal dog with the wolf:

Today, however, researchers assume that the early variety of forms in domestic dogs is a characteristic feature of domestication and cannot be traced back to certain breed lines that can be derived from different species . Therefore, the summary of similar dog types and their characterization as a (original) breed is now viewed as wrong. Modern DNA analyzes have also refuted the earlier derivations of domestic dogs from different species: According to these findings, all domestic dogs are descended from the wolf.

Theophil Studer (1845-1922)

While the jackal was postulated as a possible ancestor of all dogs in some works from the 18th century, Studer only descends one primordial breed from him. According to Studer, crossing the hypothetical primal dog with the golden jackal ( Canis aureus ) resulted in a fifth hypothetical primal breed:

In the meantime, however, DNA analyzes have clearly and unequivocally refuted the theory of the descent of the domestic dog from the jackal.

In the 20th century, the jackal theory was particularly represented in German-speaking countries by Konrad Lorenz , who differentiated between the one- man dog, derived from the wolf, and the calfactor , derived from the jackal . However, as early as the middle of the 20th century, this theory was largely rejected due to morphological and behavioral studies.

  • The morphological reasons given at the time were:
    • The jackal has a smaller brain than the dog; however, a reduction in the size of the brain is considered a domestication feature
    • The brain structures of wolf and dog are very similar, but not those of dog and jackal
  • The behavioral reasons given at the time were:
    • Jackal and dog do not mate voluntarily
    • The howling of jackals sounds different to that of wolves and dogs, dogs do not respond to it
    • Warning sounds from wolf and dog have similarities, those from dog and jackal do not
    • The facial expressions of the dog and the jackal are clearly different, while there are parallels between the dog and the wolf

Other uses of the term

The term primal race was also used to denote races originally native to a particular region.

See also

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Th. Studer: The prehistoric dogs in their relationship to the currently living races. In: Treatises of the Swiss Palaeontological Society. Volume 28, 1901, pp. 1–137, access to the full text (PDF; 11.0 MB)
  2. ↑ For example Friedrich Siegmund Voigt: Textbook of Zoologie Stuttgart 1835 p. 293 [1] . There, too, the primordial race is used in the sense of ancestry, s. P. 407 [2]