Anatolian Shepherd the transhumance, guarding flocks of sheep from wolves and cheetahs. It is probable that dogs of this type existed 6,000 years ago in what is now Turkey. Anatolian Shepherd Dogs are members of a very old breed, probably descended from powerful hunting dogs from Mesopotamia. This mountain dog breed was developed over time to meet a specific set of circumstances. The most formative were climate (very hot, dry summers and very cold winters), lifestyle (sedentary, semi-nomadic and nomadic) and duties (guarding flocks moving great distances on the Central Anatolian Plateau). In the 1970s, breeders in the West became interested in
Anatolian diagonal and land bridges intermittently formed across the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara. After the end of the most recent ice age, plants surviving to the west of the Anatolian diagonal could spread back into Europe while those to the east could spread into Syria, Iraq and the Near East. The Taurus Mountains provide a cool damp climate for species that cannot survive the hot dry summer climate on either side, and this could have encouraged survival and speciation, resulting in the many endemic species found here today. Anatolian diagonal The Anatolian diagonal is a theoretical dividing line which runs