Mary Allen
#4 Rottweilers descended from the Molossus, a Mastiff-like dog.
Their ancestors marched into Germany with the Romans, leading the cattle that sustained them as they conquered the known world.
#5 As the army traveled, the large dogs mated with dogs from the areas they passed through and thus began to form new breeds.
One of the areas traversed was southern Germany, where the Romans established colonies in order to be able to use the climate and the soil and to practice agriculture.
They built villas with red-tiled roofs. More than 600 years later, while building a new church, residents excavated the site of this ancient Roman bath and laid out one of the red-tiled villas.
#6 This discovery was the inspiration for the city’s name: Das Rote Wil (the red tile).
Over the centuries, the Rottweiler cattle market area thrived, the German equivalent of a Texas cow town, and descendants of the Roman Molossus dogs herding cattle into town for slaughter.