Study Suggests Korea’s Ancient Dogs Differed from Other East Asian Canines

SOUTH GYEONGSANG, SOUTH KOREA—A genetic study of the remains of four 2,000-year-old dogs recovered from two archaeological sites on the Korean Peninsula suggests that the canines belonged to a lineage separate from other dog populations in East Asia, according to the Korea JoongAng Daily. It had been previously thought that dog populations in East Asian shared a single lineage. Hyeongcheol Kim of the Gaya National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage, Suyeon Kim and A-reum Yu of the National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage, and their colleagues determined that ancient Korean dogs resembled the Australian dingo and the New Guinea singing dog. Korean dogs were also found to carry DNA from European dogs, indicating that Korean dogs had contact with Western dogs over a period of thousands of years. In addition, Korean dogs and wolves continued to interbreed after domestication. Most of this contact was with the now extinct Japanese wolf (Canis lupus hodophilax), but ancient Korean dogs also likely mixed with wolf populations from Korea and China. Read the original scholarly article about this research in PLOS One. To read about another study of dogs in the Pacific Northwest, go to "Ancient DNA Revolution: Wild and Woolly Ancestors."