Other, native, domesticated canids
Mitchell (2017) proposes a theory to explain the slow dynamics of spread
of C. familiaris in South America, including the Southern Cone
and Chile, after its original arrival across the Bering Strait. He
argues that the canids of South America were better adapted to local
diseases such as leishmaniasis canina and distemper than C.
familiaris, and acted as reservoirs and vectors that led to almost
epidemic levels of these diseases in dog populations, limiting their
adoption by native peoples. The Andes may also have acted as a barrier
to dog migration into Chile. An alternative perspective is developed by
Prates (2014), who argues that many societies may have failed to
incorporate C. familiaris into their social practices and daily
lives if other canids already played roles such as keeping watch,
hunting, or companionship. Prates bases this hypothesis on the discovery
of a D. avus skeleton at a funerary site of the “Loma de
los Muertos” archeological deposit in Río Negro Province, on the
southern half of Argentina, dated around 2000-3000 ya (Stahl 2012, 2013;
Prates, 2010). This is most probably a deliberate burial. In the context
of cosmological systems in many areas of South America in which taming
of individual animals is a common practice and a fundamental part of
their understanding of social relations between species (Stahl, 1984;
Erikson, 2000), this suggests the hypothesis of possible taming of
canids in many societies of the continent. It is thus not impossible to
imagine that some sort of domestication or taming of native canids by
Patagonian hunter-gatherers happened in Chile (Gusinde, 1951; Gallardo,
1910).
C. familiaris was thus not necessarily the only canid either
tamed or domesticated by humans. However, further research would be
necessary to determine what kinds of relationships may have existed
between native canids and humans in Chile, and to what extent this
domestication took place, as at present we do not have archeological nor
paleontological data to support these hypotheses.