. 2019 Dec 4;286(1916):20191929.

doi: 10.1098/rspb.2019.1929. Epub 2019 Nov 27.

Specialized sledge dogs accompanied Inuit dispersal across the North American Arctic

Carly Ameen^{1

2}, Tatiana R Feuerborn^{3

4

5

6

7}, Sarah K Brown^{8

9

10}, Anna Linderholm^{11

12}, Ardern Hulme-Beaman^{2

12

13}, Ophélie Lebrasseur^{2

12

14}, Mikkel-Holger S Sinding^{15

5

16

17}, Zachary T Lounsberry⁹, Audrey T Lin^{12

18}, Martin Appelt¹⁹, Lutz Bachmann¹⁶, Matthew Betts^{20

21}, Kate Britton^{22

23}, John Darwent⁸, Rune Dietz^{24

25}, Merete Fredholm²⁶, Shyam Gopalakrishnan^{4

15}, Olga I Goriunova²⁷, Bjarne Grønnow¹⁹, James Haile¹², Jón Hallsteinn Hallsson²⁸, Ramona Harrison²⁹, Mads Peter Heide-Jørgensen³⁰, Rick Knecht²², Robert J Losey³¹, Edouard Masson-MacLean²², Thomas H McGovern^{32

33}, Ellen McManus-Fry²², Morten Meldgaard^{4

5}, Åslaug Midtdal³⁴, Madonna L Moss³⁵, Iurii G Nikitin³⁶, Tatiana Nomokonova³⁷, Albína Hulda Pálsdóttir^{38

28}, Angela Perri³⁹, Aleksandr N Popov³⁶, Lisa Rankin⁴⁰, Joshua D Reuther⁴¹, Mikhail Sablin⁴², Anne Lisbeth Schmidt¹⁹, Scott Shirar⁴¹, Konrad Smiarowski^{33

43}, Christian Sonne^{24

44

45}, Mary C Stiner⁴⁶, Mitya Vasyukov⁴⁷, Catherine F West⁴⁸, Gro Birgit Ween⁴⁹, Sanne Eline Wennerberg⁵⁰, Øystein Wiig¹⁶, James Woollett⁵¹, Love Dalén^{6

7}, Anders J Hansen^{4

5}, M Thomas P Gilbert^{15

52}, Benjamin N Sacks^{53

9}, Laurent Frantz⁵⁴, Greger Larson^{12

55}, Keith Dobney^{2

22

56}, Christyann M Darwent⁸, Allowen Evin⁵⁷

Affiliations

¹ Department of Archaeology, University of Exeter, Exeter, Devon, UK.
² Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, Merseyside, UK.
³ Department of Archaeology and Classical Studies, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden.
⁴ Centre for GeoGenetics, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
⁵ The Qimmeq Project, University of Greenland, Nuussuaq, Greenland.
⁶ Department of Bioinformatics and Genetics, Swedish Museum of Natural History, Stockholm, Sweden.
⁷ Centre for Palaeogenetics, Stockholm, Sweden.
⁸ Department of Anthropology, University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA.
⁹ Mammalian Ecology and Conservation Unit of the Veterinary Genetics Laboratory, University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA.
¹⁰ Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Olympia, WA, USA.
¹¹ Department of Anthropology, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA.
¹² The Palaeogenomics and Bio-archaeology Research Network, Research Laboratory for Archaeology and History of Art, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
¹³ School of Natural Sciences and Psychology, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, UK.
¹⁴ GCRF One Health Regional Network for the Horn of Africa (HORN) Project, Institute of Infection and Global Health, Liverpool, UK.
¹⁵ Section for Evolutionary Genomics, GLOBE Institute, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
¹⁶ Natural History Museum, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
¹⁷ Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, Nuuk, Greenland.
¹⁸ Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
¹⁹ National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark.
²⁰ Canadian Museum of History, Gatineau, Quebec, Canada.
²¹ Department of Anthropology, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada.
²² Department of Archaeology, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK.
²³ Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Sachsen, Germany.
²⁴ Arctic Research Centre, Aarhus Universitet, Aarhus, Denmark.
²⁵ Department of Bioscience Roskilde, Aarhus Universitet, Roskilde, Denmark.
²⁶ Department of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
²⁷ Laboratory of Archaeology and Paleoecology of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography (Siberian Branch of Russian Academy of Science), Irkutsk, Russian Federation.
²⁸ Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, The Agricultural University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland.
²⁹ Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies, and Religion, University of Bergen, Bergen, Hordaland, Norway.
³⁰ Birds and Mammals, Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, Copenhagen K, Denmark.
³¹ Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
³² Department of Anthropology, Hunter College CUNY, New York, NY, USA.
³³ The Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA.
³⁴ Holmenkollen Ski Museum, Oslo, Norway.
³⁵ Department of Anthropology, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA.
³⁶ Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography at the Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnography of the Peoples of the Far East (Far Eastern Branch of Russian Academy of Science), Vladivostok, Russian Federation.
³⁷ Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.
³⁸ Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis (CEES) Department of Biosciences, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
³⁹ Department of Archaeology, Durham University, Durham, UK.
⁴⁰ Department of Archaeology, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St John's, Canada.
⁴¹ Department of Anthropology, University of Alaska Museum of the North, Fairbanks, AK, USA.
⁴² Zoological Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences, St Petersburg, Russian Federation.
⁴³ Section for Cultural Heritage Management, Department of Cultural History, University Museum of Bergen, Bergen, Norway.
⁴⁴ Department of Bioscience, Aarhus Universitet, Aarhus, Denmark.
⁴⁵ School of Forestry, Henan Agricultural University, Zhengzhou, China.
⁴⁶ School of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA.
⁴⁷ Department of Biological Diversity and Sustainable Use of Biological Resources, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moskow, Russian Federation.
⁴⁸ Department of Anthropology and Archaeology Program, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA.
⁴⁹ University of Oslo Museum of Cultural History, Oslo, Norway.
⁵⁰ Government of Greenland, Veterinary and Food Authority, Nuuk, Greenland.
⁵¹ Département des Sciences Historiques, Université Laval, Quebec, Canada.
⁵² Norwegian University of Science and Technology, University Museum, Trondheim, Norway.
⁵³ Department of Population Health and Reproduction, University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA.
⁵⁴ School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK.
⁵⁵ School of Archaeology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
⁵⁶ Department of Archaeology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada.
⁵⁷ Institut des Sciences de l'Evolution-Montpellier, CNRS, Université de Montpellier, IRD, EPHE, Montpellier, Occitanie, France.

PMID: 31771471
PMCID: PMC6939252
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2019.1929

Specialized sledge dogs accompanied Inuit dispersal across the North American Arctic

Carly Ameen et al. Proc Biol Sci. 2019.

. 2019 Dec 4;286(1916):20191929.

doi: 10.1098/rspb.2019.1929. Epub 2019 Nov 27.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Department of Archaeology, University of Exeter, Exeter, Devon, UK.
² Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, Merseyside, UK.
³ Department of Archaeology and Classical Studies, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden.
⁴ Centre for GeoGenetics, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
⁵ The Qimmeq Project, University of Greenland, Nuussuaq, Greenland.
⁶ Department of Bioinformatics and Genetics, Swedish Museum of Natural History, Stockholm, Sweden.
⁷ Centre for Palaeogenetics, Stockholm, Sweden.
⁸ Department of Anthropology, University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA.
⁹ Mammalian Ecology and Conservation Unit of the Veterinary Genetics Laboratory, University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA.
¹⁰ Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Olympia, WA, USA.
¹¹ Department of Anthropology, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA.
¹² The Palaeogenomics and Bio-archaeology Research Network, Research Laboratory for Archaeology and History of Art, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
¹³ School of Natural Sciences and Psychology, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, UK.
¹⁴ GCRF One Health Regional Network for the Horn of Africa (HORN) Project, Institute of Infection and Global Health, Liverpool, UK.
¹⁵ Section for Evolutionary Genomics, GLOBE Institute, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
¹⁶ Natural History Museum, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
¹⁷ Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, Nuuk, Greenland.
¹⁸ Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
¹⁹ National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark.
²⁰ Canadian Museum of History, Gatineau, Quebec, Canada.
²¹ Department of Anthropology, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada.
²² Department of Archaeology, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK.
²³ Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Sachsen, Germany.
²⁴ Arctic Research Centre, Aarhus Universitet, Aarhus, Denmark.
²⁵ Department of Bioscience Roskilde, Aarhus Universitet, Roskilde, Denmark.
²⁶ Department of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
²⁷ Laboratory of Archaeology and Paleoecology of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography (Siberian Branch of Russian Academy of Science), Irkutsk, Russian Federation.
²⁸ Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, The Agricultural University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland.
²⁹ Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies, and Religion, University of Bergen, Bergen, Hordaland, Norway.
³⁰ Birds and Mammals, Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, Copenhagen K, Denmark.
³¹ Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
³² Department of Anthropology, Hunter College CUNY, New York, NY, USA.
³³ The Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA.
³⁴ Holmenkollen Ski Museum, Oslo, Norway.
³⁵ Department of Anthropology, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA.
³⁶ Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography at the Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnography of the Peoples of the Far East (Far Eastern Branch of Russian Academy of Science), Vladivostok, Russian Federation.
³⁷ Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.
³⁸ Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis (CEES) Department of Biosciences, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
³⁹ Department of Archaeology, Durham University, Durham, UK.
⁴⁰ Department of Archaeology, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St John's, Canada.
⁴¹ Department of Anthropology, University of Alaska Museum of the North, Fairbanks, AK, USA.
⁴² Zoological Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences, St Petersburg, Russian Federation.
⁴³ Section for Cultural Heritage Management, Department of Cultural History, University Museum of Bergen, Bergen, Norway.
⁴⁴ Department of Bioscience, Aarhus Universitet, Aarhus, Denmark.
⁴⁵ School of Forestry, Henan Agricultural University, Zhengzhou, China.
⁴⁶ School of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA.
⁴⁷ Department of Biological Diversity and Sustainable Use of Biological Resources, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moskow, Russian Federation.
⁴⁸ Department of Anthropology and Archaeology Program, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA.
⁴⁹ University of Oslo Museum of Cultural History, Oslo, Norway.
⁵⁰ Government of Greenland, Veterinary and Food Authority, Nuuk, Greenland.
⁵¹ Département des Sciences Historiques, Université Laval, Quebec, Canada.
⁵² Norwegian University of Science and Technology, University Museum, Trondheim, Norway.
⁵³ Department of Population Health and Reproduction, University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA.
⁵⁴ School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK.
⁵⁵ School of Archaeology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
⁵⁶ Department of Archaeology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada.
⁵⁷ Institut des Sciences de l'Evolution-Montpellier, CNRS, Université de Montpellier, IRD, EPHE, Montpellier, Occitanie, France.

PMID: 31771471
PMCID: PMC6939252
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2019.1929

Abstract

Domestic dogs have been central to life in the North American Arctic for millennia. The ancestors of the Inuit were the first to introduce the widespread usage of dog sledge transportation technology to the Americas, but whether the Inuit adopted local Palaeo-Inuit dogs or introduced a new dog population to the region remains unknown. To test these hypotheses, we generated mitochondrial DNA and geometric morphometric data of skull and dental elements from a total of 922 North American Arctic dogs and wolves spanning over 4500 years. Our analyses revealed that dogs from Inuit sites dating from 2000 BP possess morphological and genetic signatures that distinguish them from earlier Palaeo-Inuit dogs, and identified a novel mitochondrial clade in eastern Siberia and Alaska. The genetic legacy of these Inuit dogs survives today in modern Arctic sledge dogs despite phenotypic differences between archaeological and modern Arctic dogs. Together, our data reveal that Inuit dogs derive from a secondary pre-contact migration of dogs distinct from Palaeo-Inuit dogs, and probably aided the Inuit expansion across the North American Arctic beginning around 1000 BP.

Keywords: Canis lupus familiaris; ancient DNA; archaeology; circumpolar; geometric morphometrics; migration.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

We declare we have no competing interests.

Figures

**Figure 1.**
Morphometric variation of Arctic dogs and wolves. (a) Size variation of Pleistocene and Modern wolves, and Palaeo-Inuit, Inuit, historic and recent Greenland (Historic and modern Greenland breeds, see electronic supplementary material, text) dogs. Boxplot of the log-transformed centroid size with sample size shown in brackets. ‘n.s.’ highlight non-significant pairwise comparison (Wilcoxon's test) between neighboring groups (table 2). (b) Overall shape differentiation between groups shown as neighbour-joining networks derived from Mahalanobis distances for each element separately. (c) Visualization of the cranial (top), first lower molar (middle) and mandible (bottom) shape differences between: wolves (black) and all domestic dogs (red); Palaeo-Inuit dogs (pink) and Inuit dogs (green); and Greenland dogs (orange), and Inuit dogs (green). Shape differences are visualized along the discriminant axis between the groups. Wireframes with dashed lines indicate non-significant differences.

**Figure 2.**
Phylogenetic topology and geographic distribution of haplotypes through time. (a) The A-clade mitochondrial haplotypes of dogs inferred by maximum-likelihood analyses depicting the four subclades discussed in the text with their respective bootstrap support (for the whole tree see electronic supplementary material). (b) Geographical origin of North American dog samples and cultural affiliation. Pie charts indicate the abundance of subclades. Sites with more than one sample are shown in boxes with representation of sample number and haplotype. Modern samples outside of the North American Arctic were excluded from the map and pie chart. Culture dates represent the earliest and latest appearance of each group in the North American Arctic within this dataset [6]. (Online version in colour.)

See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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Specialized sledge dogs accompanied Inuit dispersal across the North American Arctic

Affiliations

Specialized sledge dogs accompanied Inuit dispersal across the North American Arctic

Authors

Affiliations

Abstract

Conflict of interest statement

Figures

References

Publication types

MeSH terms

Substances

Associated data

Grants and funding

LinkOut - more resources

Full Text Sources