The Rhodesian Ridgeback is a dog breed bred in the Southern Africa region. By the 1860s, European colonisers had also imported a variety of mainly European dog breeds to this area of Africa, including such dedicated hunting dogs as Great Danes, Bloodhounds, Greyhounds, and terriers. Genetic analysis indicates that the Ridgeback and the Great Dane fall within the same genetic clade (group), which implies the Dane's major contribution. These breeds were bred with the indigenous African dogs, including the dog of the Khoikhoi people, which resulted in the Boer hunting dogs, generically called names such as boerhund (Boer hound) in Dutch then its descendant language of Afrikaans, which are the chief forerunners to the modern Rhodesian Ridgeback.' - This theory was forwarded at the 2008 Rhodesian Ridgeback World Congress, and contends that an honest evaluation of the breed's functional history indicates that during its formative development and early use as a breed, the ridgeback was much more a 'hunter's/farmer's ox-wagon dog' than it was a 'lion dog'.