Studies on the prehistory of the breed

Here we collect articles, analyses, notices, etc. that can shed light on glimpses of the breed's prehistory.

One of our members is an archaeologist looking specifically at the origin of the Samoyed dog

János Makó

Dear group members! I am an archaeologist at the Hungarian National Museum and a proud Samoyed owner. I am researching the breed's history both before and after standardization, not only in Hungary but throughout Europe. In my opinion, many people are unaware of how special the Samoyed breed is.

• The oldest dog skull was found in Russia and is approximately 44,000 years old. This skull is a mixture of a Samoyed and an extinct wolf subspecies.
• The Botai culture is an archaeological culture (3700–3100 BC) that first domesticated horses. Alongside horses, archaeologists have also uncovered several large dog cemeteries. Based on archaeogenetic studies, these dogs can be considered the ancestors of today's Samoyeds.
• Archaeologists have uncovered several large Samoyed dog cemeteries within the territory of Samoyeds. Based on archaeological findings and archaeogenetic studies (Parker, 2014), it can be stated that Samoyeds are among the seven most ancient dog breeds that have survived in their original forms in the world.

Dogs (14–18th centuries AD) from Nadym Gorodok archaeological site (Western Siberia, Russia) Morphology and function

This is an interesting study. It adds further evidence that the use of reindeer dogs in Siberia is a very late occurrence, a fairly modern occupation.This also supports the theory that the smaller reindeer dogs that appeared in some places at the beginning of the 20th century probably evolved (received additional work tasks) from the old hunting and draft dogs.These theories are also supported by the socio-economic development in Siberia. It was very late in history that quantitative reindeer herding started. Hunting and wild reindeer were for a long time the primary livelihood. Before quantitative herding started in Siberia, there was no need for a herding dog.Far from all people groups in Western Siberia switched from hunting to reindeer husbandry. The same applies to the Samoyed peoples, where far from all were reindeer herders, but many Samoyed people groups continued their traditional hunting society.The Nenets are ONE of the Samoyed peoples of the time, but not all groups from the Nenets people kept large reindeer herds around the turn of the century 19th-20th centuries. The Samoyed peoples were made up of several different subgroups, which many seem to forget today.The Samoyedic peoples consisted, among other things, of:

• Enets
• Naganasans
• Selcuper
• Ostijak Samoyeds
• Nenets
• With several.

Even the polar explorers mention in their travelogues that there were different types of dogs among the Samoyed people and that they mainly brought their dogs for the expeditions from the more eastern part of Western Siberia. They bought up dogs that were used by the indigenous people as draft dogs.From the historical mapping, it is clear that the breed we call Samoyed dog today is made up of the founders who were taken from Siberia around the turn of the 19th/20th century and most likely most of them were used as hunting and draft dogs.Among other things, Fritjof Nansen mentions in his descriptions that there was a smaller variant of dog that was kept by certain ethnic groups that they used in reindeer herding, but these dogs were not the ones that the expeditions selected as draft animals.And we know that many of our original dogs came as survivors from the expeditions. As well as some specimens were directly imported from Siberia, sometimes with the help of the same dog traders as the expeditions.It is easy to get things wrong when people today look exclusively at the Nenets and their today's quantitative reindeer husbandry when trying to determine the origins of today's Samoyed dog.It is probably true that the smaller dog variety recognized today as the Nenetslaikan has its origins in the Nenets development of quantitative reindeer husbandry. The Nenetslaikan in turn is not the origin of our Samoyed dog as some seem to believe. Today's Samoyed dog is most likely not descended from the smaller reindeer dog, but from the slightly larger variant that was used as a hunting and draft dog by various groups among the Samoyed and Ostyak peoples. Maybe somewhere they mixed in a small reindeer herder, but probably then a single specimen.In Nordic literature, the Samoyed dog was long called Ostjakdog. Then they switched to calling it Ostjakdog/Samoyed dog and then the breed came to be called exclusively Samoyed dog. Around the 1950s, the word ostijak was no longer used in our pedigrees.