The genomic map of dog breeds was built  from DNA samples of blood or mouth scrapings obtained from 938 dogs representing 127 breeds, as well as nine wild canids and genotypes retrieved from publicly available sources.  A total of 1,346 dogs from 161 breeds developed on North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia were studied.

The “Drogo” specimen was carbon dated and found to be 18,000 years old, about 16,000 years before other genetic evidence says Shiba were bred in Japan.

So what happened in those 16,000 years?  We do not know, but perhaps Drogo is a Shiba?  The estimate of 2500 years for when the first Shiba were bred is a minimum based on when we estimate that the ancestors of most modern Japanese crossed ointo Japan from what in now South Korea.  Shiba could well have migrated into Japan with thoise invaders.

We usually credit humans with creating dogs by breeding selected wolf puppies.  If this is the case, however, why would that have only happened one time, in one place in a world with human and wolves spread everywhere from Africa to Siberia?  Put another way why is Canis lupus familiaris — only a single subspecies of , Canis lupus.

All dogs — Canis lupus familiaris — are a single subspecies of the wolf.

If Shiba are “dogs” perhaps the “breeding” was actually not by humans by by smart Shiba figuring out how to exploit people!  This would explain  why, like all modern Shiba,  the “amazingly well-preserved” specimen has a genome that is largely wolf but shows about 20% of what we now know as dog DNA? 

Anyhow, from my point of view, Drogo IS a Shiba.