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A study done with dog DNA showed that our “best friend” in the animal world can also be our oldest companion.
The analysis reveals that the domestication of dogs dates back 11,000 years, to the end of the last Ice Age.
This confirms that dogs were domesticated before any other known species.
Our canine companions were spread across the Northern Hemisphere at the time and had already divided into five different types.
Despite the expansion of European dogs during the colonial era, traces of these ancient indigenous breeds survive today in America, Asia, Africa, and Oceania.
The research fills in some gaps in the natural history of our closest animal companions.
Pontus Skoglund, co-author of the study and group leader from the Ancient Genomics laboratory at the Crick Institute in London, told BBC News: “Dogs are really unique because they are something very strange, if you think about it. Hunter-gatherers, they domesticated what it was actually a wild carnivore – wolves are pretty scary in many parts of the world. “
“The question is, why did people do that? How did it happen? That’s what interests us.”
To some extent, the genetic patterns of dogs mirror humans because people carried off their companions when they moved. But there were also important differences.
Rhodesian Ridgeback maintains the ancestry of an ancient African dog breed
Ancient traces
For example, the first European dogs were initially diverse and appeared to come from two very different populations. One related to Middle Eastern dogs and the other to Siberian dogs.
But at some point, perhaps after the beginning of the Bronze Age (3000 to 1200 BC), a single lineage of dogs spread widely and replaced all other dog populations on the continent. This pattern has no counterpart in the genetic patterns of people in Europe.
Anders Bergström, lead author and postdoctoral researcher at Crick, said: “If we look back over 4-5,000 years ago, we can see that Europe was a very diverse place when it comes to dogs. The European dogs that we see today arrive in such an extraordinary range of shapes and sizes that they are genetically derived from a very small subset. “
An international team analyzed the complete genomes (the total complement of DNA in the nuclei of biological cells) of 27 ancestral dog remains associated with different archaeological cultures. They compared them to each other and to modern dogs.
The results reveal that breeds such as the Rhodesian Ridgeback, in southern Africa, and the Chihuahua and Xoloitzcuintli, in Mexico, retain genetic traces of ancient indigenous dogs in the region.
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The New Guinea Singing Dog is representative of a strain found in dogs in Asia and Oceania.
The ancestry of East Asian dogs is complex. Chinese breeds appear to derive from some of their ancestors, such as the Australian dingo and the New Guinea singing dog, with the rest coming from Europe and the Russian steppe dogs.
The New Guinea singing dog gets its name from its melodious howl, characterized by a sharp rise in pitch at first.
Greger Larson, co-author from the University of Oxford, said: “Dogs are our oldest and closest animal companions. Analyzing the DNA of ancient dogs shows us how far our shared history goes and helps us understand when and where this relationship goes. started deep “.
Dogs are believed to have evolved from wolves that have ventured into human camps, perhaps sniffing for food. When domesticated, they could have served humans as hunting companions or guards.
The results suggest that all the dogs come from a single extinct population of wolves, or perhaps from a few close relatives. If there were multiple domestication events around the world, these other strains didn’t contribute much DNA to later dogs.
Skoglund said it is unclear when or where domestication began. “The history of dogs has been so dynamic that you can’t expect it to still be there to be easily read in DNA. We really don’t know, and that’s fascinating.”
Many animals, such as cats, probably became our pets when humans settled on farms just over 6,000 years ago. Cats were likely helpful in controlling pests such as mice, which were attracted to debris generated by dense stands. This places their domestication in the cradles of agriculture, such as the Near East.
“For dogs, it could be almost anywhere: cold Siberia, the warm Near East, Southeast Asia. These are all possibilities in my mind,” explained Pontus Skoglund.
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