Bernard,

I agree we need to find some Chihuahua bones in Mexico in order to "prove" that Chihuahuas existed as far back as 100 AD at Tres Zapotes. Yes, the artifact at Tres Zapotes doesn't "prove" there were Chihuahuas but it is certainly interesting that this artifact does, indeed, look like a Chihuahua and thus it is a valid question to ask, "is it?"

Your stated: " We have seen a lot of this type of argument before-- something "looks like" therefore it must be."

The fact is, Bernard, is that many artifacts are defined by what they "look like." I have read NUMEROUS peer reviewed journal articles and books by scholars where they find an artifact which "looks Olmec" outside of the Olmec homeland and then use this as evidence of contact between the Olmec and wherever the artifact was found. This is standard practice in archaeology. If you find artifacts that "look like" Teotihuacano art in a Mayan burial it's logical to assume there may have been contact between the two cultures. Yes, this doesn't "prove" contact...it could have gotten there through down the line trade, etc....but it at least suggests contact which would need to be explored further. It is a legitimate question to ask: "was their direct contact?"

You state: "Confidence is diminished when erroneous cliams are made about the dates of maize introduction into the Unites States Southeast are made."

I made no erroneous claims of corn. Yes I know about the early dates of corn in Alabama and Florida....but these dates are NOT ACCEPTED by mainstream archaeology. It has been argued that these are the result of modern contamination. I used the date of 200 AD for the arrival of corn in Florida because THAT'S THE EARLIEST ACCEPTED DATE BY MAINSTREAM SCHOLARS. I have no problem with corn arriving in Florida at 850 BC as William Sears argues. But all the scholarship on this topic doesn't accept his early dates. They only accept the 200 AD date. Please prove me wrong and show me one single modern paper that backs up Sears in his 850 BC date for corn in Florida.

And yes I know about the early introduction of corn in the southwest. But I was not referring to corn in the southwest, now was I? I was talking about corn in the EASTERN UNITED STATES. And the earliest, accepted date for the cultivation of corn in the eastern United States is 200 AD. And I guarantee you, if I had used those earlier dates in a paper to argue for an even earlier arrival of Mesoamericans you would have used the fact that these are not accepted dates in your critique of that research. So please Bernard, tell me what is YOUR official position about the arrival of corn in the EASTERN UNITED STATES? Do you accept the early dates or are you with the majority of scholars who do not accept them?

Furthermore, there's no mention of corn in the Chihuahua pots article so why that's even pertinent to this discussion is beyond me.

You stated: "In my original post I presented evidence for a simpler explanation of the identity of small, edible, buried with their owner dogs-- the tlalchichi."

I have no problem whatsoever accepting the idea that the small, mute dogs eaten in the southeast were Techichis. But there's a problem: their skull and snout shape do not fit that modeled on the Bull Creek Dog Pot from Georgia. Techichis do not have apple-dome skulls like apple head Chihuahuas do. Techichis are well represented in the pottery of Colima in west Mexico which date to the early centuries A.D. thus we can make a direct comparison between the Georgia pot and the Colima pot. They have certain similiarities: both show a fat little dog, both have erect ears and overturned tail. But the similarities end there. The Techichi does not have an apple dome skull or short and slightly upturned snout.

This is precisely why I decided the Georgia pot likely didn't represent a Techichi even though the Spanish descriptions fit Techichi better than they fit Chihuahua (i.e., barkless). That's when I decided to research the origins of the Chihuahua and found one theory that stated they were the result of mixing Xolos with Techichis. I thought, "well, if the first chihuahuas were derived from techichis then perhaps they retained the barkless attribute but this was later bred out over the past few hundred years."

You state: "The modern chihuahua is an entirely manufactured product by over a hundred years of directed dog breeding by kennel owners"

Exactly Bernard, and so the "barkless" gene or genes may have been selected out as undesirable by breeders sometime since the Spanish first encountered these barkless dogs in the 1530s.

You state: "Modern chihuahuas have no native American genes." What are "native american genes" for dogs? Those are arbitrary determinations by researchers about what genes constitute native american dogs and european dogs based on the samples they have to work with. DNA work on dogs is a very new field...DNA itself is a very new field and surprises are found all the time. Like the surprising finding of the Chimera babies, babies whose DNA does not match their birth mother:

[en.wikipedia.org])
[boingboing.net]

So yes, I accept that the DNA evidence doesn't support the idea of Chihuahuas as New World dogs. But I think the Tres Zapotes artifact and Bull Creek Dog Pot in Georgia are legitimate pieces of evidence that should make us take pause on this question as having been completely decided by the DNA evidence.

I'm keeping an open mind on the matter. Perhaps there were Chihuahuas in the New World, perhaps not. But what I am certain of is that the scholarly opinion held by Charles Hudson that the "little dogs" the Spanish saw in the Southeast were "opossums" and not dogs is absolutely, completely unsubstantiated and bad scholarship. The Bull Creek Georgia dog pot proves there were fat little dogs in the southeast. The only question is whether they were techichis or chihuahuas. Yes, even the most esteemed scholars can be absolutely, positively wrong no matter whether their claims are published in peer review journals or by academic presses.





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Gary Daniels
Author, "Mayan Calendar Prophecies: Predictions for 2012-2052"
Creator, LostWorlds.org, TheRealMayanProphecies.com
[www.LostWorlds.org]
[www.TheRealMayanProphecies.com]