Dogs May Have Been Domesticated Earlier than Previously Believed: 17,000 Years Ago

A recent study found a new connection between dogs and people. Scientists now believe that dog-human friendship began far earlier than previously believed: 17,000 years ago.

A nearly entire family of carnivores, such as foxes, dogs, coyotes, wolves, and others, was discovered in 1985 as a result of an excavation conducted by Jesus Altuna in the Erralla cave (Zestoa, Gipuzkoa).

Oldest Household Canines

Although the location and timing of wolf domestication are still up for question, the dog is the first creature to be domesticated by humans.

The humerus discovery in 1985 was challenging to investigate at the time because the researchers did not know which species of canid it belonged to.

The team studying human evolution at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), under the direction of Professor Conchi de la Ra, has now thoroughly examined the bone fragments.

Canis lupus familiaris (domestic dog) has been identified as the species using morphological, radiometric, and genomic investigation.

The humerus was directly dated using carbon-14 and particle accelerator mass spectrometry, yielding an age range of 17,410-17,096 cal. BP.

This makes the Erralla dog one of the oldest household canines to have lived in Europe, having existed during the Upper Palaeolithic Magdalenian epoch.

Last Glacial Maximum

The few Magdalenian dogs that have been previously analyzed and the Erralla dog have the same mitochondrial lineage.

They noted that the Last Glacial Maximum, which occurred in Europe about 22,000 years ago, coincided with a time of frigid weather that is associated with the ancestry of this branch.

"These results raise the possibility that wolf domestication occurred earlier than proposed until now, at least in western Europe, where the interaction of Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers with wild species, such as the wolf, may have been boosted in areas of glacial refuge (such as the Franco-Cantabrian) during this period of climate crisis," Conchi de la Rúa, head of the Human Evolutionary Biology group, said in a press release statement.

Domestication of Dogs

The Earth's temperature started to steadily decrease at the end of the Miocene epoch, 6 million years ago. This led to the Ice Age, commonly known as the Pliocene and Pleistocene glaciations.

Interesting Engineering notes that as forests and savannahs were rapidly supplanted by steppes or grasslands, only specific species of animals that were able to adapt to these changes would survive.

As a result of selective pressure, populations adapt to new habitats that contain other species with developing behaviors, a process known as coevolution.

One of the biggest shifts in human history was the domestication of animals, which began with the long-lasting relationship between wolves and hunter-gatherers at least 15,000 years ago.

Dogs were the first domesticated species and the only big carnivore known to have coexisted in close proximity with humans during the Pleistocene.

The research was released in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.