The Dogs of Tsenacomoco: Ancient DNA Reveals the Presence of Local Dogs at Jamestown Colony in the Early Seventeenth Century.

ABSTRACT: Multiple studies have demonstrated that European colonization of the Americas led to the death of nearly all North American dog mitochondrial lineages and replacement with European ones sometime between AD 1492 and the present day. Historical records indicate that colonists imported dogs from Europe to North America, where they became objects of interest and exchange as early as the seventeenth century. However, it is not clear whether the earliest archaeological dogs recovered from colonial contexts were of European, Indigenous, or mixed descent. To clarify the ancestry of dogs from the Jamestown Colony, Virginia, we sequenced ancient mitochondrial DNA from six archaeological dogs from the period 1609-1617. Our analysis shows that the Jamestown dogs have maternal lineages most closely ass

SUBMITTER: Thomas AE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12395468 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature