Extremely Large Boarhounds In Ancient Greece

Extremely large boarhounds resembling the Great Dane appear in ancient Greece; in frescoes from Tiryns dating back to 14th–13th centuries BC.[1][2] The large boarhound or Molossian hound continues to appear throughout ancient Greece in subsequent centuries right up to the Hellenistic era.[3][4][5][6] The Molossian hound, the Suliot dog and specific imports from Greece were used in the 18th century to increase the stature of the boarhounds in Austria and Germany and the wolfhounds in Ireland.[7][8][9][10][11][12][13]

Bigger dogs are depicted on numerous runestones in Scandinavia, on coinage in Denmark from the 5th century AD and in the collection of Old Norse poems, known in English as Poetic Edda. The University of Copenhagen Zoological Museum holds at least seven skeletons of very large hunting dogs, dating from the 5th century BC going forward through to the year 1000 AD.

Hunting dog[edit]

A chamber dog with a gilded collar, Brandenburg (Germany), 1705
They were dog hybrids in different sizes and phenotypes with no formal breed.[14] These dogs were called Englische Docke or Englische Tocke - later written and spelled: Dogge - or Englischer Hund in Germany. The name simply meant "English dog". After time, the English word "dog" came to be the term for a molossoid dog in Germany[15] and in France.[16] Since the beginning of the 17th century, these dogs were bred in the courts of German nobility, independently of