When Dogs First Became Man’s Best Friend
Our canine companions have their ancestors in wild wolf packs. But scientists are still determining when dogs were first domesticated, which set them on a genetic trajectory distinct from wolves.
To identify the origins of dogs, an international team of researchers led by the Francis Crick Institute, the University of East Anglia and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology recently analyzed the DNA of 216 samples of ancient canine skeletal remains from across Europe, some of which dated back more than 10,000 years ago. Because the remains were contaminated with DNA from microbes that had colonized them, advanced techniques were needed to extract any remaining dog DNA.
“We used a technique called ‘hybridization capture’ to increase the amount of usable DNA,” study author and evolutionary genomicist Anders Bergström explained in a press release. “This involved identifying the genetic variants present in today’s gray wolves and ‘fishing’ for them only from the ancient canid samples.”
Read more: “The dark side of wolf reintroduction”
The remains of a dog from Kesslerloch Cave in Switzerland have been dated to 14,200 years old, making it one of the oldest known dogs in Europe. It was found to be more genetically similar to European dogs than to Asian dogs, showing that some differentiation had already occurred and that dogs were likely already domesticated during the era of hunter-gatherer lifestyles and before the advent of agriculture in Europe.
When farmers migrated from Southwest Asia to Europe during the Neolithic (around 10,000 years ago) with their domestic animals, they brought their own dogs, which mixed with the dogs of local hunter-gatherers. Researchers, based on analysis of the DNA of modern European dogs, have attributed about half of the dogs’ ancestry to hunter-gatherer pups that existed before breeding.
“Most dogs running in a local park today trace some of their ancestry to dogs living in Europe more than 14,000 years ago,” said the study’s lead author, Pontus Skoglund. “It’s fascinating that we have walked side by side for so many thousands of years, despite considerable changes in human lifestyles.”
Dogs: not just man’s best friend. But apparently our best friend since time immemorial.
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