Need help finding oldest dog breeds?!!?

I'm hoping someone might be able to help me. I'm doing a dog behaviour course and as part of it, I've got to find the oldest recorded breeds of dog on each continent. I'm finding it really hard and wondered if anyone could point me in the right direction. I seem to be reading contradictory stuff and its all getting confusing.
Thanks in advance x

I know the Alaskan Malamute is one of the oldest breeds of dog..if that is any help???

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_dog_breeds

Salukis are very old, as are Malamutes, Huskies and Elkhounds.

and Phaoroh hounds (SP)

The author clearly didn't know that the malinois and Belgians sheepdog are 2 of the 4 varieties of the same breed only other coat and interbred untill resently

I also thought Greenand dogs were an extremely old breed of dog

Shar Peis, chowchows, tibetan mastiff...

In May 2004 this paper was published on the genetic research done into the Canid genome.

These are the 7 breeds that have a genetic make up nearest to wolf:

Chow Chow and Shar Pei [China]
Akita and Shiba Inu [Japan]
Basenji [Africa]
Siberian Husky [Northeast Siberia]
Alaskan Malamute [Northwest Alaska].

However they only studied 85 breeds of dogs & these breeds were not included:

· Canaan Dog of Israel
· Finnish spitz
· Karelian bear dog
· Lapland spitz or lapphund
· Norwegian sheepdog or buhund, and the
Norwegian spitz or lundehund
· Russian laikas
· Swedish elkhound or jamthund
· Inuit Dog, Eskimo Dog and Greenland Eskimo
dog of North America

This makes interesting reading

Would not rely on Wilipedia for any serious information unless you can verify the source. Most of the oldest dogs are of the Spitz or spitz type breeds like the Basenji or are hounds and closely resemble their nearest relatives the wild dogs.

No one knows for certain which dogs or which continent and both the dogs and the people who adapted them for their use have legs and moved from continent to continent.

It is believed that man began in the region now occupied by Africa, they are now all over the face of earth. My own breed is supposed to go back to a time man lived in caves and was nomadic. So you will see where a particular type of dog was developed may not relate to where the wild dog from which it was developed came.

Seems your school should draw up a far tighter question if they are to receive anything like a full answer. It is impossible in most cases to go back before full records were kept and dogs kept in the domestic situation most certainly does.