Exactly how far back does the running dog go in the UK ?

[Paid 935]

Well put Shrophunter, they have just found out that these old pictish carvings are actually text, a languge

not based in celtic or any other more modern import. the oldest known writings from this island, so will be interessting when they learn how to read it.

 

a couple more old pictish carving showing running dogs, and one showing the other sort of hound we were known for

 

 

 

the one below is my fav, I think it shows 2 types of hunting dog

 

 

this one shows the war dogs

 

[skycat 6,173]

Shrophunter: brilliantly put. There's a fascinating series on tele about our coast line: in one episode it clearly explains how settlers here would have been cut off from the continent at the end of the last ice age.

 

Now here's my little theory: as the Channel (just an example of a plain that then flooded) was a vast plain full of game (so they reckon) then might it not be feasible that the ancients did indeed have swift dogs to help hunt that game? And of course those dogs stayed once the island was cut off? Whether or not those dogs then evolved to work more by nose in the forested island which is now the UK is debatable, but I'd have thought that even then humans would have seen the merit of having a fast dog to catch the game which nose dogs put up in cover.

 

Paid: I love those carvings you've put up: thankfully the myth that our ancestors were no more than upright apes with no skills has been put firmly to bed for some time now. Those carvings prove it beyond any doubt.

[Lennard 10]

Sorry Stabs.

 

Thanks gentlemen for improving my knowledge.

 

L

[Malt 379]

Now here's my little theory: as the Channel (just an example of a plain that then flooded) was a vast plain full of game (so they reckon) then might it not be feasible that the ancients did indeed have swift dogs to help hunt that game?

 

Well the flooded plain that is now the channel is named 'Doggerland', so you could be right after all!

[staffs riffraff 1,068]

wicked thread guys keep it up

[Catcher 1 639]

How far back do we go.They do say every dog is bred from the wolf.

[Malt 379]

Just doing some reading. They reckon the British Isles has been inhabited since at least 8000BC. The dog has been domesticated for at least 15,000 years, probably more, so there has probably been hunting dogs here as long as there have been people.

[Skinny 29]

i seen something about the relationship between man and dogs and the partner ship between homo erectus and dogs gave him the edge over neanderthral man. So really hunting with dogs led to the rise of the human race.

[tinytiger 826]

Ah the old Celtic myth again. You need to get up to date with modern genetic research. The "Celts" were not a people from the Hungarian/eastern plains who swept west to settle western europe.

The Celts lived in southern France/northern Spain as described by Caesar. They traded extensively with the western side of the British Isles and indeed some may have even settled here. However to describe the ancient inhabitants of Britain as "celtic" is now known to be totally wrong.

There was never a big "Celtic" invasion of Britain and nor were "Celtic" people pushed to the West by the advancing Saxons into places like Wales and Cornwall. DNA testing shows that the vast majority of British inhabitants are descended from people who settled here after the Ice age ended. There has been little new DNA inflow despite the Romans, Saxons, Vikings, Normans etc.

So most of us genetically are mesolithic hunters and the mesolithic (middle stone age - hunter gatherers) is when there is the first evidence in Britain of dogs being used to help us hunt. (Thats a couple of thousand years before Stonehenge)

Bearing in mind that at that time most of Britain was heavily forested and people tended to stick around the shorelines, a dog that hunted by scent and sight would be more likely. At that stage it wouldn't have been very refined and I'll stick my neck out and go for something that resembles a modern dingo.

Perhaps with the subsequent neolithic farming revolution and the opening up of farmland by cutting down vast areas of forest about 6/7000 years ago, running dogs may then have been developed - after all a running dog needs space to run and just because the people now farmed doesn't mean they didn't still hunt. Wild meat would still have been needed to supplement their corn. Only now they needed a faster dog to chase game in the open fields and would have started selectively breeding for speed.

Later, trade with the Phoenicians and Romans would undoubtedly have introduced further bloodlines from the Mediterranean to the gene pool, possibly desert type dogs.In short I'd say running dogs have been used here for a very long time. Just a thought. I'll duck back down under the parapet now !

 

I think thats all based on mitochondrial d.n.a i.e our damlines.In ireland i think something like 90% of us have the same.Men ,as soldiers and sailors more than likely were in them times wouldnt affect that,,some celtic men might have come over ,introduced ironworking and their language,rode all around them ,but it still wouldnt affect the mitochondrial dna(female line) of the population.The deise (waterford people) were definitely celts from gaul.

But your right though-the ancient skulls and depictions of running dogs in pictish art suggest that greyhound types have been here since a long time before the celts

I think i read somewhere that greyhounds have more dna in common with the european wolf than they do with the saluki family.

[hywel micah 18]

Nice topic.

 

As far as I know the Saxons who lived here (Netherlands) and in Germany were swamp/forest people without running dogs. These people, we call the saxon tribe Britten in Dutch, moved to the UK islands around 1500 -600 BC. After them, around the year 0, the Celts moved in (maybe displaced the Britten). The Celts for sure had running dogs and horses as they decended from people from the plains between Hungary and India where both dogs and horses are useful/domesticated. The Celts expanded into Europe and France around the year 0 to 300 AD. At that time the Romans also expanded and Arrian (a roman officer) was stationed in Spain where he saw and owned running dogs and wrote his treatise on coursing around 150 AD. Almost all roman references to running dogs are from the celtic outskirts of the empire...roman hunting references from the core of the empire, Italy and Greece are mostly about scent hound use. The Celts moving to the UK from France for sure had running dogs and I bet they took them with them, around 100-300 AD. A bit later on Northern Atlantic France, also Celts, was "famous" for its big dark running dogs, these were also traded.

 

Here is a reasonable proof that Celts, here around 100 AD, had greyhound like dogs. A very similar bronze from the same period was found in Cloucestershire.

 

http://www.museumkennis.nl/lp.rmo/museumkennis/i000455.html

 

L

The Celts came to Briton around 700-600 BC, then came the Romans 46 Ad, Saxons 410-500 Ad, Nomads 1066 Ad .