When and Where Were Dogs Were First Domesticated | Early European History And Religion

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STUDY OF THE FIRST DOMESTICATED DOGS

wolf Jarrett A. Lobell and Eric Powell wrote in Archaeology magazine, “Just how and when the species first became recognizably "doggy" has preoccupied scientists since the theory of evolution first gained widespread acceptance in the 19th century. The idea that dogs were domesticated from jackals was long ago discarded in favor of the notion that dogs descend from the gray wolf, Canis lupus, the largest member of the Canidae family, which includes foxes and coyotes. While no scholars seriously dispute this basic fact of ancestry, biologists, archaeologists, and just about anyone interested in the history of dogs still debate when, where, and how gray wolves first evolved into the animal that is the ancestor of all dog breeds... Were the first dogs domesticated in China, the Near East, or possibly Africa? Were they first bred for food, companionship, or their hunting abilities? The answers are important, since dogs were the first animals to be domesticated and likely played a critical role in the Neolithic revolution. Recently, biologists have entered the debate, and their genetic analyses raise new questions about when and where wolves first developed into what we today recognize as dogs.[Source: Jarrett A. Lobell and Eric Powell, Archaeology magazine, September/October 2010]

The archaeological record suggests dogs were domesticated in multiple places at different times, but in 2009, a team led by Peter Savolainen of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm published an analysis of the mitochondrial DNA of some 1,500 dogs from across the Old World, which narrowed down the time and place of dog domestication to a few hundred years in China. "We found that dogs were first domesticated at a single event, sometime less than 16,300 years ago, south of the Yangtze River," says Savolainen, who posits that all dogs spring from a population of at least 51 female wolves, and were first bred over the course of several hundred years. "This is the same basic time and place as the origin of rice agriculture," he notes. "It's speculative, but it seems that dogs may have first originated among early farmers, or perhaps hunter-gatherers who were sedentary."

In 2010 a team led by biologist Robert Wayne of the University of California, Los Angeles, showed that domesticated dog DNA overlaps most closely with that of Near Eastern wolves. Wayne and his colleagues suggest that dogs were first domesticated somewhere in the Middle East, then bred with other gray wolves as they spread across the globe, casting doubt on the idea that dogs were domesticated during a single event in a discrete location. Savolainen maintains that Wayne overemphasizes the role of the Near Eastern gray wolf, and that a more thorough sampling of wolves from China would support his team's theory of a single domestication event.

University of Victoria archaeozoologist Susan Crockford, who did not take part in either study, suspects that searching for a single moment when dogs were domesticated overlooks the fact that the process probably happened more than once. "We have evidence that there was a separate origin of North American dogs, distinct from a Middle Eastern origin," says Crockford. "This corroborates the idea of at least two 'birthplaces.' I think we need to think about dogs becoming dogs at different times in different places."

As for how dogs first came to be domesticated, Crockford, like many other scholars, thinks dogs descend from wolves that gathered near the camps of semi-sedentary hunter-gatherers, as well as around the first true settlements, to eat scraps. "The process was probably driven by the animals themselves," she says. "I don't think they were deliberately tamed; they basically domesticated themselves." Smaller wolves were probably more fearless and curious than larger, more dominant ones, and so the less aggressive, smaller wolves became more successful at living in close proximity to humans. "I think they also came to have a spiritual role," says Crockford. "Dog burials are firm evidence of that. Later, perhaps they became valued as sentries. I don't think hunting played a large role in the process initially. Their role as magical creatures was probably very important in the early days of the dog-human relationship." [Source: Jarrett A. Lobell and Eric Powell, Archaeology magazine, September/October 2010]

Dog Domestication: 27,000 to 40,000 Years Ago?

19,000-year-old image of a wolf from a European cave

Genetic information drawn from a 35,000-year-old wolf bone found below a frozen cliff in northernmost Russia led scientists to estimate that canine domestication occurred much earlier than previously thought. Will Dunham of Reuters wrote: “Scientists said they pieced together the genome of the wolf that lived on Russia's Taimyr Peninsula and found that it belonged to a population that likely represented the most recent common ancestor between dogs and wolves. Using this genetic information, they estimated that dog domestication occurred between 27,000 and 40,000 years ago. Previous research based on genetic data from modern-day wolves and dogs had estimated that dogs were first domesticated 11,000 to 16,000 years ago based on an estimate of how quickly mutations occurred across the genome. [Source: Will Dunham, Reuters, May 21, 2015]

“Swedish Museum of Natural History geneticist Love Dalén said the Taimyr wolf genome showed that the rate of mutation was only about half of what previously had been assumed, indicating domestication occurred much earlier. "The difference between the earlier genetic studies and ours is that we can calibrate the rate of evolutionary change in dog and wolf genomes directly, and we find that the first separation of dog ancestors must have been in the older range," Harvard Medical School geneticist Pontus Skoglund added.

“Dalén found the wolf bone fragment, likely a part of a rib, in the Siberian permafrost. The wolf likely belonged to a population that roamed the Eurasian steppe tundra during the last Ice Age, hunting large prey like bison, musk ox and horses, Dalén said."I think one of the simplest explanations is that hunter-gatherers may have caught wolf pups, which is extremely easy to do, and kept them in captivity as sentinels against the large predators that roamed the landscapes of the last Ice Age - bears, cave lions, etc. as well as other dangerous mammals - mammoths, woolly rhinos, other humans," Dalén said.

“Skoglund said Siberian Huskies and Greenland sled dogs share a large number of genes with the Taimyr wolf. "The most likely explanation is that the Siberian domestic dog populations interbred with local wolves when they followed early human groups into northern latitudes," Skoglund said. The research was published in the journal Current Biology.

100,000 Years of DNA Suggests First Dogs Evolved from Wolves in Central Asia — and Maybe the Middle East

In a study published Nature in June 2022, scientists announced that DNA from an 18,000-year-old Ice Siberian wolf was similar to early and modern dog DNA — seen as evidence that dogs were domesticated in Central Asia during the glacial peak of the last Ice Age . The study, which involved in a look at 100,000 years of wolf remains, also found genetic links between a subgroup of dogs and ancient wolves in the Middle East. [Source: Morgan McFall-Johnsen, Business Insider, June 30, 2022]

Morgan McFall-Johnsen wrote in Business Insider: A cohort of geneticists, led by researchers at the Francis Crick Institute, analyzed the genomes of 72 ancient wolves that were excavated across Europe, Siberia, and North America. The DNA spanned 30,000 generations of wolves. Then the researchers compared the wolf DNA to genomes of modern and ancient dogs. The dogs were most similar to gray wolves in Siberia about 13,000 to 23,000 years ago — during the last ice age.

"That's consistent with a wolf population from Central Asia leading to the origin of dogs," Adam Boyko, a canine geneticist at Cornell University, who was not involved in the study, told Insider. His own research analyzing the genomes of village dogs across the world — the semi-feral kind that aren't bred for particular traits — has pointed to the same region as the origin of dog domestication. "Now we've got this mirror image dog-wolf analysis, both pointing to Central Asia as an origin," he said. Still, he cautioned, "I don't think that the final story has been written yet."

Ancient dogs in the Middle East, Africa, and Southern Europe also show ancestry from wolves in the Middle East, in addition to their Central Asian roots. That could indicate either a second instance of domestication in the Middle East, or dogs there interbreeding with wild wolves. "This is the first time scientists have directly tracked natural selection in a large animal over a time-scale of 100,000 years, seeing evolution play out in real time rather than trying to reconstruct it from DNA today," Pontus Skoglund, study author and leader of the Francis Crick Institute's ancient genomics lab, said.

The Francis Crick Institute researchers are now turning their attention to genomes from other locations that weren't included in this study, in hopes of narrowing down where exactly domestication happened. Boyko has still more questions about the domestication of Asian gray wolves, including how humans in the area at that time fit into the picture. "After that happened is when we had the domestication of wheat, and the domestication of cats, and the domestication of cattle and pigs and all of the other species that go with being a modern human," Boyko told Insider. "But dogs were the first. To what extent do we need domestic dogs before we had agriculture? Or is it just by chance that it happened in that order? It's kind of interesting to think about, staring into your dog's eyes and wondering what actually brought the wolf out of the den and into the campsite."

Interbreeding Between Ancient Dogs and Wolves

Scientists involved in the 2022 Nature study saw one gene variant, which affects the development of skull and jaw bones, go from an anomaly to showing up in every wolf's DNA over a period of 10,000 years. Morgan McFall-Johnsen wrote in Business Insider: Scientists think that variant is present in all wolves and dogs today. The work is similar to the ancient DNA analysis that has revealed how genetic mutations, like the one that allowed humans to digest lactose, emerged in humans and spread across the globe. [Source: Morgan McFall-Johnsen, Business Insider, June 30, 2022]

Like Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, dogs and wolves have mingled and interbred as long as the two species have existed. That's made it difficult for scientists to trace genetic traits passing from one species to the other, and even more difficult to pinpoint when and where dogs were first domesticated. No modern-day wolf population is more genetically similar to dogs' ancestors than any other modern-day wolf population.

Overall, ancient wolves are more similar to other ancient wolves on the other side of the continent than they are to modern-day wolves living in the same areas. Ancient wolves traveled great distances and bred, sharing their genes across those distances. "This connectivity is perhaps a reason why wolves managed to survive the ice age, while many other large carnivores vanished," Skoglund said. That connectivity also makes an especially tangled ball of genetic yarn for researchers to unravel as they try to link dog domestication to a single wolf population. This study adds to the evidence for a single instance of domestication somewhere in Asia.

DNA Study: Most Dogs Came from a 40,000-Year-Old Wolf Pack?

In 2017, a team led by Stony Brook University genomicist Krishna Veeramah published a study in the journal Nature Communications, Veeramah that argued that the most plausible explanation for dog domestication was a single domestication event [Source:Ben Guarino, Washington Post, July 18, 2017]

tree of ancient dog breeds

Ben Guarino wrote in the Washington Post: “The wolf-dog split is a tricky one. “Dogs and wolves are promiscuous, and the species boundary between them is a leaky one,” said Adam Boyko, an expert on dog genetics at Cornell University in New York and an author of the 2015 study. “To further complicate it, it seems like dogs were domesticated from a wolf population that has likely gone extinct in the wild.” “The new work focused more on the when than the where. Dogs separated from wolves between 36,900 to 41,500 years ago, a date that Veeramah and his colleagues reached by calculating the rate of canine mutations over time. They compared DNA from ancient specimens with modern genetic data to create what's known as a molecular clock. /*/

“The biologists also analyzed a 5,000-year-old dog skull from Cherry Tree Cave in Germany. They combined this data with that from a dog bone found in Newgrange, Ireland, which was included in the 2016 dual-domestication report. They compared these three with snippets of genetic info from 5,600 wolves and modern dogs, plus nearly 100 complete canine genomes. By tracking the mutation rates, the scientists determined dogs probably split from wolves about 40,000 years ago. Dogs divided into two groups — European and Asian groups — about 20,000 years afterward, the authors said. /*/

“The DNA revealed that the German animals “looked like modern dogs, in particular like European dogs,” Veeramah said. The study was “concordant” with the idea of a single origin for the wolf-dog split, he added. “Given the high degree of sharing of sweeps,” which is to say genetic signatures, “between these ancient samples and modern samples, it seems clear that these dogs descend from a single domestication origin,” Boyko said in an email. It does not rule out a separate domestication event, he said, but that event would have “contributed little if any genetic material to these genomes.” /*/

Dogs Domesticated Separately in Europe and Asia?

Humans may have domesticated dogs two separate times, taming wolves both in Europe and Asia thousands of years ago. AFP reported: “A major international research project may have cleared some of the controversy surrounding the origins of "man's best friend," which has until now remained a mystery with two primary hypotheses. The first holds that humans domesticated dogs for the first time in Europe more than 15,000 years ago. Opposing researchers believe the domestication happened approximately 12,500 years ago in Central Asia or China. [Source: AFP, June 3, 2016]

“The new study, published in the American journal Science, suggests both claims might carry weight. "Maybe the reason there hasn't been a consensus about where dogs were domesticated is because everyone has been a little bit right," said Greg Larson, a top Oxford University researcher who helped lead the project. Researchers used ancient DNA evidence and the archaeological record of early dog species in their research.

The project involved sequencing for the first time the genome of a 4,800-year-old dog at Trinity College in Dublin. That dog's bones came from the Neolithic Passage Tomb of Newgrange, Ireland, a contemporary of Stonehenge in England. The team also used mitochondrial DNA from 59 ancient dogs who lived between 14,000 to 3,000 years ago, comparing the samples to genetic traits of more than 2,500 modern dogs. Their findings suggest dogs were separately domesticated both in Europe and in Asia, and later mixed as humans migrated across the continent. That would mean most dogs today are a genetic mix of their Asian and European ancestors.

The new hypothesis would explain in part why scientists have had a hard time interpreting previous genetic studies. "The new model is provocative and exciting," said John Novembre, a population geneticist at the University of Chicago. "The full collaboration is going to be essential to untangling this complicated story." The double origin theory could also suggest that cats and pigs were domesticated multiple times, said Peter Savolainen, a geneticist at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm."If domestication only happened in one place, it was probably a very hard thing to do," he said. "But if it happened twice, maybe it wasn't as hard as we thought."

A 5,000-year-old dog skull found in Germany underwent whole genome sequencing. It was found to be very similar to the genome of modern dogs, suggesting that all modern dogs are direct ancestors of the domesticated dogs that lived in the world's earliest farming communities in Europe. [Source: Ashley Strickland, CNN, May 2, 2018]

DNA Evidence of Dog Domestication in the Middle East

Genetic studies made public March 2010 indicate that dogs were domesticated in the Middle East not the Far East as had been previously suggested. In the study published online in the journal Nature by a team led by Robert Wayne, a professor of evolutionary biology at UCLA, genetic comparisons were made between 900 dogs from 85 breeds and over 20 gray wolves, the closest living wild relatives of dogs. Using molecular genetic techniques, the scientists looked at more than 48,000 markers in the entire genome — or DNA sequence — of each animal in the study.

20120207-Saluki 2.jpg
Saluki What the scientists found was that the vast majority of dogs share unique genetic markers with gray wolves from the Middle East than other wild population, with a small number of East Asian dog breeds having similarities with wolves from China . The finding is consistent with archaeological data that links the domestication of dogs — as well as cats and many livestock animals — with the rise of human civilization in the Fertile Crescent in modern-day Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.

the finding that all dogs evolved from wolves in East Asia came from comparison between a single, small DNA sequence taken from mitochondria. Wayner told Reuters, the new research was far more comprehensive and “is much more consistent with the archaeological record...We know that dogs from the Middle East were closely associated with humans because they were found in human burial sites.

DNA Evidence of Dog Domestication in East Asia

A DNA study conducted by Swedish team concluded that East Asia was the most likely place of origin for domesticated dogs. In the study DNA was taken from 654 dogs from around the world, and the scientists found the most genetic variation among dogs in China — which suggests that they have lived there the longest, mixing up their genes — thus concluding that dogs originated there. The evidence also suggest the transformation took place around 15,000 years ago.

A 1997 study based of an analysis of genetic material suggests that domestication may have occurred as long as 135,000 years ago. The study. done by biologists at UCLA, was based on DNA samples from coyotes, jackals, 67 breeds of dog and 27 wolf population throughout Europe, Asia and North America. The scientists found that the present-day breeds of dogs carried the genetic fingerprints of a single female similar to way humans carry the genetic material of a single female dubbed as Eve. The wide variety of genetic variation of dog species is presented as evidence that dogs were domesticated much earlier than previously thought.

Tibetan Mastif

DNA evidence also suggests that wolves were domesticated on four separate occasions or were domesticated once and then dogs and wolves interbred later. Dog probably mated freely with wolves for thousands of years before they were selectively bred. Scientists believe that early dogs resembled wolves and did not being looking like domestic dogs until around 10,000 to 15,000 years ago.

DNA studies have also showed that wolves are the only ancestors of dogs and that jackals and coyotes broke off from the family tree much earlier than dogs evolved from wolves. New World dogs appear to have crossed the Bering land bridge with the first human settlers more than 12,000 years ago. DNA from ancient dogs found in California and Alaska show close links to ancient dogs from Europe and Asia, suggesting that they too descended from Old World rather than New World wolves.

Dogs First Domesticated in China — To Be Food?

John Roach wrote in National Geographic News: “According to genetic analysis published in 2009, wolves were domesticated 16,300 years ago in southern China — possibly to be livestock, not pets. “In this region, even today, eating dog is a big cultural thing,” study co-author Peter Savolainen, a biologist at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, said. “And you can also see in the historical records as far back as you can go that eating dogs has been very common” in East Asia. Therefore, you have to think of the possibility that this was one of the reasons for domesticating dogs.” [Source: John Roach, National Geographic News, September 4, 2009]

“The study was published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution and helps support the long-held theory that dogs first became “man’s best friend” in East Asia. John Roach wrote in National Geographic News: “For the new work, Savolainen and colleagues analyzed the entire mitochondrial genome — DNA passed down only from the mother — of 169 dogs, as well as portions of the genomes from 1,543 dogs from across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. These dogs all share at least 80 percent of their DNA, the team found. The animals’ genetic diversity increased the farther east the scientists looked. The greatest diversity was found in a region south of the Yangtze River in China.

“According to Savolainen, the data make it “totally clear” that genetic variation in East Asian dogs is much higher than anywhere else in the world. The analysis also suggests that wolves were domesticated from several hundred individuals sometime between 5,400 and 16,300 years ago. This is around the time Asian hunter-gatherers were adopting a more settled agrarian lifestyle, which is part of what makes Savolainen think the canines might have been kept as food.

“Adam Boyko, a biologist at Cornell University in New York and co-author of the study, said he would like to see more genetic evidence before he calls the finding proof of domestication. “But clearly, it is a very interesting result,” he said. “There is a ton of data backing it up, [and] they put forth a really interesting hypothesis for dog domestication. That notion came under fire, based on a DNA analysis of so-called village dogs in Africa. The highest level of genetic diversity in modern dogs should exist in the region where the animals first came under human control. But the August 2009 study found that African village dogs have a similar amount of genetic diversity as those in East Asia, calling into question the origins of dog domestication.

Dogs Domesticated from a Northern European Ancestor 18,800 and 32,100 Years Ago?

Monte Morin wrote in the Los Angeles Times: “In research published in the journal Science, evolutionary biologists analyzed the mitochondrial genomes of 18 ancient dogs and wolves. Then they compared them to an array of modern counterparts, and even a few coyotes.The authors concluded that dog domestication most likely occurred in Ice Age Europe, between 18,800 and 32,100 years ago -- much earlier, and much farther north, than previously believed. [Source: Monte Morin, Los Angeles Times, November 14, 2013]

“Dogs, the authors argued, evolved from a now extinct species of European wolf that followed bands of nomadic or semi-nomadic humans who were hunting woolly mammoths and other large prey. Initially, the wolves sought out the carcasses and scraps of meat left behind by man, the authors suggest. Over time, these hang-around wolves began to fill a special role in human hunter-gatherer society, researchers say. “

“The initial interactions were probably at arm’s length, as these were large, aggressive carnivores,” senior study author Robert Wayne, an evolutionary biology professor at UCLA, told the Los Angeles Times. “Eventually though, wolves entered the human niche. ... Maybe they even assisted humans in locating prey, or deterred other carnivores from interfering with the hunting activities of humans.” From Europe, domesticated dogs spread across the Old World, and then to the Americas. However, the robust European wolf that got the fetch ball rolling left no other living descendants besides dogs.

Greek vase depiction of boar hunting

31,700-Year-Old Dog Remains Found in a Belgian Cave?

It can be very difficult to distinguish between wolf and dog skeletons, especially early in the history of dogs, when they would have been much more similar to wolves than they are today. What are perhaps the earliest dog-like remains date to 31,700 years ago and were first excavated in the 19th century at Goyet Cave in Belgium. Paleontologist Mietje Germonpré of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences recently led a team that studied a canid skull from the cave and concluded that it had a significantly shorter snout than wolves from the same period. [Source: Jarrett A. Lobell and Eric Powell, Archaeology magazine, September/October 2010]

This dog-like wolf could represent the first step toward domestication and would make the Paleolithic people we call the Aurignacians, better known as the first modern humans to occupy Europe, the world's first known dog fanciers. But the analysis is controversial, and there is a large gap between the age of the Goyet Cave "dog" and the next oldest skeletons that could plausibly be called dog-like, which date to 14,000 years ago in western Russia. Perhaps the Goyet Cave wolf represents an isolated instance of domestication and left no descendants. But based on finds of dog skeletons throughout the Old World, from China to Africa, we know that certainly by 10,000 years ago dogs were playing a critical role in the lives of humans all over the world, whether as sentries, ritual sacrifices, or sources of protein.

The oldest known evidence of what is thought to be domesticated dog according to some is a 14,000-year-old jaw bone found in a Paleolithic grave at Oberkassel in Germany. The dog was regarded as domesticated because it was valued enough to be buried. Buried dog bones from around the same time have been found in Iraq and Israel. A 12,000-year-old grave in Israel contains the remains of a human cradling the bones of wolf or dog puppy. This is some of the earliest evidence of dog domestication. Canine bones have been found at 400,000-year-old human settlements but scientists regarded these bones of tame wolves not dogs.

Criticism of the European Ancestor Theory from the Asian Ancestor Contingent

Monte Morin wrote in the Los Angeles Times: “Peter Savolainen, an associate professor of evolutionary genetics at Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology, argues that evidence shows dogs were first domesticated in China, probably as a source of food. Savolainen points out that Wayne and his colleagues published an earlier paper citing the Middle East as the origin of domestic dogs, but have abandoned that view. “They don’t comment on that in this paper and they should,” Savolainen said. [Source: Monte Morin, Los Angeles Times, November 14, 2013]

“He pointed out too that the paper lacks animal samples from the Middle East or China. “The only thing you’re looking at is European and Russian samples,” he said. “What can you tell really about anything? If you only have European samples, obviously you will find that Europe is the origin.”

“Wayne said he and his colleagues did not include samples from those areas because they were too recent, only about 7,000 or 8,000 years old. “That’s well after dogs were domesticated, so we’re kind of limited in that sense,” he said. As for the turnabout on the Middle East hypothesis, Wayne said it was based on new genetic evidence and the realization that domesticated dogs interbreed with local wolf populations, confusing the genetic signal.”

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons except Dog Origin sites map, Discover magazine

Text Sources: National Geographic, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Nature, Scientific American. Live Science, Discover magazine, Discovery News, Ancient Foods ancientfoods.wordpress.com ; Times of London, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, BBC, The Guardian, Reuters, AP, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File Publications, New York); “History of Warfare” by John Keegan (Vintage Books); “History of Art” by H.W. Janson (Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.), Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

Last updated June 2024