Showing posts with label South China. Show all posts
Showing posts with label South China. Show all posts

The Dingo Came To Australia Through Indonesia

It was believed that Australia's dingo dog arrived here via Southeast Asian or Chinese seafarers. Then an overland journey was proposed through Taiwan and the Philippines. Genetic evidence now shows that they originated in South China and got to Australian by way of Indonesia.

How they crossed the ocean is still a mystery. The oldest evidence for the presence of the dingo in Australia is 3,500. This is a long time after the ice age and sea levels were about the same then as they are today.

The dingo is really an ordinary dog. It "split" from the pre-modern domestic dog 5,000 years ago. This older domestic dog spread out from South China 16,000 years ago. The dingo is closely related to the New Guinea singing dog. Genetic evidence shows that these two variants moved into Southeast Asia before ordinary domestic dogs accompanied humans as far as Polynesia 3,000 years ago. Whether dingoes travelled with humans is not clear. Dingos have a different genetic mutation than domestic dogs so interbreeding did not occur.
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Biology