Why are dogs dogs, and not wolves? First of all, pretty much everybody who has ever dealt directly with wolves, coyotes, or dog-hybrids agrees: the animals are wild. They are not domesticated, nor tame. They are. not. dogs.
Pierotti and Fogg (last post) try to convince us that the First Nations, the aboriginal Americans, regarded dogs and wolves as the same thing. But wait a sec - they didn't use wolves to lug the travois, did they? No, they didn't. They used dogs. Ipso facto, Pierotti and Fogg are full of it.
I have a number of other issues with the Pierotti and Fogg book. They portray the First Nations as monolithic in belief regarding dogs and wolves. They weren't. Good science shows that the First Nations of the Americas had just as wide a variety of response to dogs as did European and Asian cultures. Some ate them, some revered them. Some buried them with their dead. And some scorned them as dirty.
They also portray "Western" culture as monolithic. And it was not.
The Pierotti and Fogg book is persuasively written. It reads well, and fairly easily. But, unlike Coppinger, or even Derr, they don't really present us with anything more than their own ego-stroking and bias confirmation.
However, the idea that man and wolf (which wolf was NOT the grey wolf we know today) had a commensal (mutually beneficial) relationship prior to the dawn of agriculture and permanent communities has backing in what little science there is. And, it is a logical concept. Personally, I find this concept just as good, rationally, as Coppinger's thesis that dogs developed as a result of the dawn of permanent human communities. All this does is deliver a variety of wolf, which is pre-disposed to be friendly to humans, to the scene at the dawn of agriculture, some 10k to 25k years ago.
Good science tells us that dogs are not descended from grey wolves, but rather that grey wolves and dogs are "sisters" in evolution - likely descending from a single "parent" type of wolf, a wolf that does not exist today.
By the way, although I've said this before elsewhere, Derr focuses on this same concept - that wolves developed a mutual relationship with humans prior to the advent of agriculture. Derr, I think, allows for the possibility of human control over the interaction. Which I doubt, but it is possible.
And, again, I close with this thought: the advent of agriculture and permanent communities saw a distinct change in the physical appearance of the wolves we now call dogs. That significant development in the history of mankind was accompanied by a significant change in the animals we now call dog. Regardless of how dogs became dogs - they came to us through that filter of village dogs.
Pierotti and Fogg (last post) try to convince us that the First Nations, the aboriginal Americans, regarded dogs and wolves as the same thing. But wait a sec - they didn't use wolves to lug the travois, did they? No, they didn't. They used dogs. Ipso facto, Pierotti and Fogg are full of it.
I have a number of other issues with the Pierotti and Fogg book. They portray the First Nations as monolithic in belief regarding dogs and wolves. They weren't. Good science shows that the First Nations of the Americas had just as wide a variety of response to dogs as did European and Asian cultures. Some ate them, some revered them. Some buried them with their dead. And some scorned them as dirty.
They also portray "Western" culture as monolithic. And it was not.
The Pierotti and Fogg book is persuasively written. It reads well, and fairly easily. But, unlike Coppinger, or even Derr, they don't really present us with anything more than their own ego-stroking and bias confirmation.
However, the idea that man and wolf (which wolf was NOT the grey wolf we know today) had a commensal (mutually beneficial) relationship prior to the dawn of agriculture and permanent communities has backing in what little science there is. And, it is a logical concept. Personally, I find this concept just as good, rationally, as Coppinger's thesis that dogs developed as a result of the dawn of permanent human communities. All this does is deliver a variety of wolf, which is pre-disposed to be friendly to humans, to the scene at the dawn of agriculture, some 10k to 25k years ago.
Good science tells us that dogs are not descended from grey wolves, but rather that grey wolves and dogs are "sisters" in evolution - likely descending from a single "parent" type of wolf, a wolf that does not exist today.
By the way, although I've said this before elsewhere, Derr focuses on this same concept - that wolves developed a mutual relationship with humans prior to the advent of agriculture. Derr, I think, allows for the possibility of human control over the interaction. Which I doubt, but it is possible.
And, again, I close with this thought: the advent of agriculture and permanent communities saw a distinct change in the physical appearance of the wolves we now call dogs. That significant development in the history of mankind was accompanied by a significant change in the animals we now call dog. Regardless of how dogs became dogs - they came to us through that filter of village dogs.
