What's happened
Two new studies reveal the oldest canine DNA, dating back up to 15,800 years, showing dogs existed during the Paleolithic era. The research traces their spread across Europe and suggests domestication occurred well before agriculture, highlighting a long-standing bond with humans.
What's behind the headline?
The new findings significantly extend the timeline of dog domestication, pushing it back to at least 15,800 years ago. This challenges earlier assumptions that domestication coincided with the rise of agriculture. The discovery of dogs buried with humans and their genetic similarity across diverse regions indicates a close relationship that predates farming. The fact that early dogs spread across Europe before the Neolithic revolution suggests they played a crucial role in hunter-gatherer societies. The persistent genetic gap between wolves and dogs underscores that domestication was a complex, gradual process, likely involving multiple events and regions. These studies will likely influence future research to focus on the Paleolithic period, emphasizing the importance of dogs in early human life and migration patterns.
What the papers say
The articles from France 24, AP News, and the New York Times all highlight the significance of these discoveries, but with slight differences in emphasis. France 24 emphasizes the mystery surrounding the origins of dogs and the role they may have played during the Ice Age, quoting Swedish geneticist Pontus Skoglund. AP News underscores the importance of ancient DNA analysis techniques and the timeline shift, noting that dogs existed before agriculture and were important to hunter-gatherers. The New York Times emphasizes the genetic similarity of early European dogs across different sites and the implications for understanding early human-dog relationships. While all sources agree on the importance of the findings, France 24 and AP News focus more on the timeline and domestication process, whereas the NYT highlights the genetic continuity across regions, suggesting a widespread and early bond between humans and dogs.
How we got here
Previous research on dog origins was limited by the difficulty of analyzing ancient bones and DNA. Recent advances in sequencing technology have enabled scientists to extract and study ancient canine genomes more effectively. These studies build on earlier findings that suggested dogs descended from grey wolves, with domestication likely happening thousands of years ago, before the development of agriculture.
Go deeper
Common question
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How Old Are the Earliest Known Dogs?
Recent discoveries in genetics and archaeology have pushed back the timeline of dog domestication to nearly 16,000 years ago. This means dogs have been companions to humans for much longer than previously thought. Curious about the origins of dogs and their connection to human history? Below, we explore key questions about the ancient roots of our best friends.
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Pontus Skoglund is a Swedish population geneticist, currently at the Francis Crick Institute and formerly at Harvard Medical School.
Skoglund studies ancient DNA to verify human history, mostly about how humans populated Earth.