At the end of the last century large amounts of remains from Neolithic dwellings were found on the shores of Swiss lakes. Along with the archaeological remains, a vast number of animal bones were excavated. These bones were mainly considered to be remains from hunting and animal breeding and subsequent butchering and eating by our ancestors 3,000 - 5,000 years ago. In his book "Untersuchungen der Thierreste aus den Pfahlbauten der Schweiz" the zoologist and paleontologist from Basel, Karl Ludwig Rütimeyer (1825 - 1895), tried to reconstruct the Neolithic wildlife along with the domestic animals. For Rütimeyer the dogs he found were not domestic breeds from wild ancestors, but he thought them to belong to a now extinct wild species (Canis familiaris). Rütimeyer did not concentrate as much on the dog as on the bovines. The true founder of scientific cynology was the professor for zoology and anatomy at the University of Berne and director of the Natural History Museum, Theophil Studer (1845 - 1922). From 1874 on Studer's research concentrated on the origin of the domestic dog and the evolution of modern breeds. In order to gain exact and reproducible results, he consistently made use of craniometric methods, which consist in the comparison of metric values and proportions of skulls. During his years at the Museum he collected a large number of modern domestic and wild dogs. After Studer's death his collection was doomed to be forgotten because of financial problems and because the Museum had storage problems. His successor, Prof. Franz Baumann, although not personally involved in canine research, did not want to store away into oblivion these collections and he sought contacts with the "Schweizerische Kynologische Gesellschaft" i.e. the Swiss equivalent of the Kennel Club. These consultations lead to the idea of a foundation under the responsibility of the Museum. The foundation was to be named after the world famous Professor for geology, Albert Heim (1849 - 1937).
