New study: Dogs domesticated 33 000 years ago

_{Denyse O'Leary

December 15, 2015

Animal minds, News}

Share: Facebook; Twitter; LinkedIn; Flipboard; Print; Email

All dogs alive today can trace at least some of their ancestry back to dogs that were domesticated 33,000 years ago in southern East Asia, suggests one of the most extensive ever investigations of canine DNA.

In addition to pinpointing the place and time for the earliest dog domestication, the new study, published in the journal Cell Research, found that the first domesticated dogs descended from grey wolves that likely came from China.

The research, conducted by an international team, further determined that dogs began to migrate out of East Asia and towards the Middle East and Africa 15,000 years ago. They then reached Europe in large numbers approximately 10,000 years ago. It appears that the dogs self-initiated the moves. More.

One suspects that the first dogs were low status wolves who saw a better deal living with humans. All the rest follows.

See also: The Economist discovers a new species emerging

Cats face rap for killing off dogs

and

Claim: Wolves helped current humans kill off Neanderthals

Follow UD News at Twitter!

Comments

"Naw. Dumb. East Asia is too far away. Dogs probably were civilized right after the flood and simply after babel people quickly moved east." What happened to all the earth's surface during the "flood", especially the continents? looking to avoid "Dumb" here especially as it might apply to this website when YEC's twist their logic into knots.groovamos_{January 21, 2016
January
01
Jan
21
21
2016
01:14 PM
1
01
14
PM
PDT}

@mahuna - "no one disputes that all domestic dogs are wolves" http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1004016 "We narrow the plausible range for the date of initial dog domestication to an interval spanning 11–16 thousand years ago, predating the rise of agriculture" : "these results provide additional support to archaeological finds, suggesting the earliest dogs arose alongside hunter-gathers rather than agriculturists. Regarding the geographic origin of dogs, we find that, surprisingly, none of the extant wolf lineages from putative domestication centers is more closely related to dogs, and, instead, the sampled wolves form a sister monophyletic clade" Seems these guys did some good research that points to a different direction: "We provide several lines of evidence supporting a single origin for dogs, and disfavoring alternative models in which dog lineages arise separately from geographically distinct wolf populations” Rather than dogs from wolves it looks like dogs and wolves from a precursor relative.Trumper_{December 16, 2015
December
12
Dec
16
16
2015
01:39 PM
1
01
39
PM
PDT}

Um, OK, so Chinese dogs only got to Europe 10,000 years ago, but one of the oldest dog fossils ever found is dated to 33,000 years ago. And that skull was found in Belgium. Which part of this am I supposed to believe? The spread of dogs worldwide in only 10,000 years is pretty hard to accept. Humans have been in the Americas and Australia for more than 20,000 years, and all the indications are that they brought dogs with them. I'd previously heard that other studies had concluded that there had been 3 separate domestications of wolves (no one disputes that all domestic dogs are wolves). Working from 3 separate starting points would seem to make more sense.mahuna_{December 15, 2015
December
12
Dec
15
15
2015
08:55 PM
8
08
55
PM
PDT}

Naw. Dumb. East Asia is too far away. Dogs probably were civilized right after the flood and simply after babel people quickly moved east. I don't think before the flood as I see dogs and bears and others as one kind. Noah had no dogs but something else was there. By the way for creationists the dog changing its body without selection on those parts that changed , I think, is a clue to other options for biological change.Robert Byers_{December 15, 2015
December
12
Dec
15
15
2015
08:07 PM
8
08
07
PM
PDT}

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Leave a Reply