Talk:Cirneco dell'Etna

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This breed is not a sighthound--Richard Hawkins 03:11, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

One newspaper article purports that the Cirneco is believed to be an ancient breed?

So, William Harris has changed "The Cirneco is believed to be an ancient breed" to "One newspaper article purports that the Cirneco is believed to be an ancient breed", claiming that better sources are needed for the less wordy statement. How many would you like, WH? Of the ten sources in the page as I write, six make some claim of antiquity (nos. 2, 6, 7 and 9 do not, as far as I can see). The FCI breed standard gives us "The Cirneco has been present in Sicily since ancient times. A Mediterranean dog of ancient origins that probably descends from hunting dogs that existed in the era of the pharaohs in Ancient Egypt and was introduced to the Mediterranean basin by the Phoenicians with Sicily as the elected region of adoption". Many other sources make the same or similar claims: Enciclopedia della Sicilia (2006): "Le origini del cirneco sono molto antiche se appare in diverse monete greche dal VI al III a.C. sia a Erice, a Motia, a Siracusa e in un tetradracma di Segesta. Eliano nel III sec. d. C. parla della presenza di migliaia di questi cani..."; the Notizie degli scavi di antichità of the Accademia dei Lincei for 1895 has "... codesta antica razza della Sicilia". A GBooks search for "Cirneco" ancient throws up a large number of claims of antiquity, in books of varying degrees of reliability.

I suppose I could add ten or twenty sources to support the statement (or more if anyone really insists), but it seems rather childish to do so; would you care to restore the previous text, WH? Innumerable dog breeds make more or less unsupportable claims of antiquity, and it doesn't seem remarkable that this one should do so too. What we need to do here is make crystal clear that this breed is in fact modern: breeding began in 1934, and recognition dates from 1939. Thanks, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 17:24, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Is the statement factually incorrect?

I am not concerned what is purported about other dogs in other articles, the issue before us is this dog in this article.

What is required is reliable source(s) written by recognised expert(s) in tracing dog history (in some form or another). Kennel clubs have expertise in breed standards and nothing more. Historical writers are less than illuminating, because they are not here today to see what the subject dog is. Journalists tapping on their type-writers late at night and pulling stuff off the internet because their bosses need something to print the next morning does not cut it with me. We have a large team of evolutionary biologists - three with international reputations - telling us that the DNA evidence shows that this breed split from the Pharaoh hound in the last 200 years (they actually imply much later, but I will make an allowance for the mutation rate they used in their study). There is nothing ancient about this modern breed.

I am not going to restore the text, you can if you wish. William Harristalk 08:19, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Work Standard & Field Trial Regulations

Removing reliable national and international references to the function of the breed diminishes the information on this page. That function/trial defines the type of dog/breed. The work standards and field trial regulations “Written by the Judges’ Committee based on documentation supplied by the Breed Club 01.06.93 Translated July, 2001 for the Italian Kennel Club (ENCI) by Jane Moore.” educate the public on the true work/identity of the Cirneco. Not all “working dogs” either nationally, internationally under FCI, or from foreign KC or AKC etc. rules are subject to obligatory working trials. https://cirneco.org/sport/ http://www.fci.be/en/nomenclature/5-Spitz-and-primitive-types.html#s7--Richard Hawkins (talk) 13:44, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Segestan coins

@Justlettersandnumbers: would you object if I added the ref-backed statement about the dogs on Segestan coins being identified as Cirneco dell'Etna, to the "It is often controversially claimed that the Cirneco dell'Etna is an ancient breed" sentence? --Yodin^T 21:52, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Looking into this a bit more, the book I was using Dogs, Past and Present: An Interdisciplinary Perspective (2023) mentions Cirnechi dell'Etna a few times:

• The head of a dog with the appearance of a greyhound, or a Cirneco dell’Etna, is depicted in a rython by the painter of Patera’s Workshop (late Apulian red-figure pottery, c. 340–320 AD)
• if we examine the well-known Attic production of funerary sémata of Classical age, surprisingly we find only the presence of a very small number of recurring dog types [...] The second recorded dog type consists of a sort of sighthound, here referred to as ‘greyhound’ (according to the terminology adopted by K. Dennis-Bryan and J. Clutton-Brock), but more similar to a modern Podenco dog, or - better yet - to the smaller Italian Cirneco dell’Etna
• Regarding the dog of Segesta, it is possible to speak of an exact breed which his unanimously recognised as the Cirneco dell’Etna
• From a study of Roman coins, it is possible to see that there were a number of different dog breeds present in the Mediterranean area: Braccoids, Molossers and images of other dogs similar to the Cirneco.
• Greyhound and descendant of ‘primitive dog’ (Cirneco dell’Etna). [...] The ‘primitive dog’ has a light constitution, with long and strong limbs, very similar to the greyhound although from the greyhound it differs in robustness. The ears, a true breed emblem, are triangular, erect and rigid, with front opening.
• In fact, the breed represented on the coins has been linked to the present-day ‘cirneco dell’Etna’, a hound originally from Sicily

It seems that the common thread here is that there is a great deal of evidence that there were Mediterranean dogs in antiquity that looked similar to the Cirneco dell’Etna, but many of the authors are cautious of stating that these dogs were Cirneco dell'Etna (as mentioned, this breed per se was first described in 1932). That said, the references would support a statement that Cirneco dell'Etna are descended from "primitive" Mediterranean dogs that looked very similar to this breed; the genetic evidence given in the article also seems to support this, with Cirneco dell'Etna apparently close to dogs from Italy and the islands of the Med. This seems like it might be a more accurate summary of the situation than the "It is often controversially claimed" statement (is this OR, or are there any sources that support there being a controversy about this?) --Yodin^T 22:53, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for this, Yodin. I'm not an archaeologist, but I think it's common knowledge that dogs looking much like this appear in Ancient Egyptian art long before the time of Segesta (one of my favourite places in the world, btw). The Maltese Kelb tal-Fenek has the exonym 'Pharaoh Hound' for that reason. In my opinion anyone who thinks they can identify an image of a dog from the ancient world as representing a breed that came into existence several millennia later is falling into logical fallacy ("it looks a bit like it, so it must be it") – what we call WP:OR, in fact.

I agree that that sentence is poor. I think that if it could be rewritten to state that dogs of somewhat similar appearance are documented in the Mediterranean from an early date, then both a mention of the coin and your ref would be wholly appropriate in it. We might also add something like 'There is no verified connection between these and the modern breed' – which would not need a source. Regards, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 10:11, 16 November 2023 (UTC)