It’s been so long since I submitted the manuscript that new research has come along and the rewriting will have to include the new research. Trying to keep the summary of the First Texans and how they got here brief, I have to resist so much new material – like dogs. Morphological differences between dogs and wolves so subtle that the exact time that dogs became domesticated is vague, some time after 50, 000 years ago. We do know that dogs were domesticated from a now-extinct species of Eurasian wolf. The linage is complicated because dogs kept breeding back with wolves. It’s not until 11,000 years ago that dogs stabilized into five lineages, one of which became the Siberian dog , from which the American dog originated. It is supposed that this dog was brought to America with the First Peoples sometime around 24,000 years ago, though the first actual dog grave wasn’t until 10,000 years ago. These dogs are now all but extinct, being mostly replaced by European breeds – and this is weird, among the survivors of the First Dogs – is the chihuahua. This is all very interesting but it doesn’t help shorten my story about the First Texans.

Jennifer Raff. Origin: A Genetic History of the Americans. New York: Twelve, Hachette Book Group, 2022.