Dog Domestication in Europe Dated to More Than 14,000 Years Ago

OXFORD, ENGLAND—According to a statement released by the University of Oxford, domesticated dogs were spread across Europe and Anatolia and living with hunter-gatherers by 14,000 years ago. Researchers led by Lachie Scarsbrook and Greger Larson of the University of Oxford analyzed genomes taken from dog remains recovered at Upper Paleolithic sites, including Pınarbaşı in Turkey and Gough’s Cave in England, and two Mesolithic sites in Serbia. These dog genomes were then compared with the genomes of more than 1,000 ancient and modern dogs and wolves from around the world. “Not only has this discovery pushed back the earliest direct evidence of dogs by 5,000 years, it also showed us that dogs and wolves were clearly separate, both biologically and in how humans interacted with them, at least 16,000 years ago,” Scarsbrook said. Dogs were likely domesticated more than 10,000 years before any other plants or animals, he explained. The study also determined that these early dogs were closely related to each other, which suggests that domesticated dogs spread rapidly across Europe, Larson added. Additionally, Paleolithic dogs were found to have been more closely related to European and Middle Eastern breeds such as boxers and salukis, rather than Arctic breeds. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Nature. To read about dogs kept by Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest, go to "Ancient DNA Revolution: Wild and Woolly Ancestors."