Dog history is really the history of the partnership between dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) and humans. That partnership is based on human needs for help with herding and hunting, an early alarm system, and a source of food in addition to the companionship many of us today know and love. Dogs get companionship, protection and shelter, and a reliable food source out of the deal. But when this partnership first occurred is at the moment under some controversy.
Dog history has been studied recently using mitochondrial DNA, which suggests that wolves and dogs split into different species around 100,000 years ago: but whether humans had anything to do with that, no one really knows. Recent mtDNA analysis (Boyko et al.), suggests that the origin and location of dog domestication, long thought to be in east Asia, is in some doubt.
European Paleolithic Dogs
Over the past few years, scholars investigating new excavations and old collections from several Upper Paleolithic sites in Europe and Eurasia have continued to find canid skulls which appear to have some aspects related to domestic dogs, while still retaining some wolf-like characteristics. In some of the literature, these are referred to as European Paleolithic dogs, even though they include some in Eurasia, and they tend to date to just before the onset of the Last Glacial Maximum in Europe, ca 26,500-19,000 calendar years BP (cal BP).
The oldest dog skull discovered to date is from Goyet Cave, Belgium. The Goyet cave collections (the site was excavated in the mid-19th century) were examined recently (Germonpré and colleagues, 2009) and a fossil canid skull was discovered among them. Although there is some confusion as to which level the skull came from, it has been direct-dated by AMS at 31,700 BP. The skull most closely represents prehistoric dogs, rather than wolves. The study examining the Goyet cave also identified what appears to be prehistoric dogs at Chauvet Cave (~26,000 bp) and Mezhirich in the Ukraine (ca 15,000 years BP), among others. In 2012, the same scholars (Germonpré and colleagues 2012) reported on collections from the Gravettian Predmostà cave in the Czech Republic, which contained two more EP dogs between 24,000-27,000 BP.
One EP dog reported in 2011 (Ovodov and colleagues) was from Razboinichya Cave, or Bandit's Cave, in the Altai mountains of Siberia. This site has problematic dates: the same excavation layer returned radiocarbon dates ranging between 15,000-50,000 years. The skull itself has elements of both wolf and dog, and, say scholars, similarities to Goyet, but its dating too is problematic, with AMS dating no more precise than "older than 20,000 years".
Debate continues in the literature whether these early skulls represent "domesticated dogs", or rather a wolf in transition to a dog, and that the physical changes seen in the skulls (consisting primarily of the shortening of the snout) may have been driven by changes in diet, rather than specific selection of traits by humans. That transition in diet could well have been partly due to the beginnings of a relationship between humans and dogs, although the relationship might have been as tenuous as animals following human hunters to scavenge, rather like the behavior that is believed to have existed between humans and cats. You could argue that cats never have been domesticated, they just take advantage of the mice we attract.
Evidence of a Certain Domestication Partnership
A burial site in Germany called Bonn-Oberkassel has joint human and dog interments dated to 14,000 years ago. The earliest "nobody-argues-about-it" domesticated dog was found in China at the early Neolithic (7000-5800 BC) Jiahu site in Henan Province. European Mesolithic sites like Skateholm (5250-3700 BC) in Sweden have dog burials, proving the value of the furry beasts to hunter-gatherer settlements. Danger Cave in Utah is currently the earliest case of dog burial in the Americas, at about 11,000 years ago.
Dogs as Persons
A reanalysis (Losey and colleagues 2011) of dog burials dated to the Late Mesolithic-Early Neolithic Kitoi period in the Cis-Baikal region of Siberia suggests that in some cases, dogs were awarded "person-hood" and treated equal to fellow humans. A dog burial at the Shamanaka site was of a male, middle-aged dog (probably a husky) which had suffered injuries to its spine, injuries from which it recovered. The burial, radiocarbon dated to ~6200 years ago (cal BP), was interred in a formal cemetery, and in a similar manner to the humans within that cemetery. Losey and colleagues believe the dog may have lived with its human family at Shamanaka.
A wolf burial at the Lokomotiv-Raisovet cemetery (~7300 cal BP) was also an older adult male. The wolf's diet (from stable isotope analysis) was ungulates, and although its teeth were worn, there is no direct evidence that this wolf was part of the community. Nevertheless, it too was buried in a formal cemetery.
These burials are exceptions, but not that rare: there are others, but there is also is evidence that people of the Kitoi culture (late Mesolithic fisher-hunters in Baikal) consumed dogs and wolves, as their burned and fragmented bones appear in refuse pits. Losey and associates suggest that these are indications that Kitoi hunter-gatherers considered that at least these individual dogs were "persons".
Haplotypes and Grey Wolves
A recent study led by Robert Wayne (vonHoldt et al., below) at UCLA and appearing in Nature in March 2010 reported that dogs appear to have a higher proportion of wolf haplotypes from grey wolves native to the Middle East. That suggests, contrary to earlier studies, that the middle east was the original location of domestication. What also showed up in this report was evidence for either a second Asian domestication or a later admixture with Chinese wolves.
Dog History: When Were Dogs Domesticated?
It seems clear that dog domestication was a long process, which started far longer ago than was believed even as recently as 2008. Based on evidence from Goyet Cave in Belgium, Chauvet cave in France, and Predmosti in Czech Republic, the dog domestication process probably began as long ago as 35,000 years, although the oldest evidence for a broader relationship, a working relationship, is at the Bonn-Oberkassel site, 14,000 years ago. The story of dog domestication is still in transition itself.
Evidence for the appearance of breed variation is found in several European Upper Paleolithic sites. Medium-sized dogs (with wither heights between 45-60 cm) have been identified in Natufian sites in the Near East (Tell Mureybet in Syria, Hayonim Terrace and Ein Mallaha in Israel, and Pelagawra Cave in Iraq) dated to ~15,500-11,000 cal BP). Medium to large dogs (wither heights above 60 cm) have been identified in Germany (Kniegrotte), Russia (Eliseevichi I) and Ukraine (Mezin), ~17,000-13,000 cal BP). Small dogs (wither heights under 45 cm) have been identified in Germany (Oberkassel, Teufelsbrucke and Oelknitz), Switzerland (Hauterive-Champreveyres), France (Saint-Thibaud-de-Couz, Pont d'Ambon) and Spain (Erralia) between ~15,000-12,300 cal BP. See Pionnier-Capitan et al for more information.
Sources
Thanks to researchers Bonnie Shirley and Jeremiah Degenhardt for fruitful discussions about dogs and dog history.
This article is part of the Guide to the History of Animal Domestication.
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