Dogs have been human companions for 14,000 years, a new study claims

A new study finds that the relationship between dogs and humans goes way way back, 14,000 years.

When were dogs born? A new study sought to finally answer that age-old, burning question.Researchers might have believed that they evolved from grey wolves during the last Ice Age, but they couldn't confirm it as fact.

But dog remains discovered at Gough's Cave in England and Pınarbaşı in Turkey pushed that timeline back, 5,000 years earlier than had been previously recorded.Recently published in the journal Nature, the latest study into the birth of the canine, which might have spawned an immediate bond between dog and man, reconstructed whole genomes, 10,000 years old, and cross-evaluated them with modern-day canines.And the results were nothing short of touching, not only proving that dogs broke away from their wolf ancestors earlier than researchers thought, but that the relationship between man and dog was intimate, from the get-go.Finding the first dogFirst, the study determined whether these newly sequenced dogs were genetically closer to modern and ancient dogs or wolves. They found, based on their analysis, that the dogs from Gough's Cave and Pınarbaşı were more genetically similar to each other than any other dog.Given their disparate geographical locations, this suggested that dogs were already widespread across western Eurasia between 18,500 and 14,000 years ago, according to the study.Furthermore, dogs can be broadly separated into two lineages: an eastern lineage, found in the Arctic, East Asian, and precontact American dogs. Eastern and western ancestries in Karelian Mesolithic dogs suggest that two lineages diverged during the Paleolithic.Additionally, studies found that both modern and ancient western Eurasian dogs possess genetic ancestry similar to present-day wolves in Syria. This study extended that search to include Near Eastern wolf ancestry, which was variable in dogs across western Eurasia during the Paleolithic and Mesolithic."Our results provide genomic evidence for the presence of genetically similar dogs in the UK, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and Türkiye during the Late Upper Palaeolithic . The ancestry of this Palaeolithic population was retained in dogs throughout the Holocene and into modern breeds."The relationship between man and dog: eternal At Gough's Cave and Pınarbaşı, both canine and human remains showed postmortem anthropic modification, indicating that they shared a close relationship, even being buried together. To investigate further whether this intimacy was present during the canine's lifetime, they analyzed the bones to determine what their diets were."...The data showed that domestic dogs consumed a diet rich in fish, closely matching that of local humans," as per Phys, which would suggest that humans were feeding their dogs, as they probably weren't fishing themselves.During and post the Ice Age, researchers found strong evidence of a variety of species of dogs throughout Europe and Turkey in different hunter-gatherer communities. Though they might not have been wearing modern-day clothing, the snapshot of man and dog might have appeared remarkably similar, nonetheless.In the end, Phys concludes, "the study reveals the beginnings of a human and canine bond that continues to this day. It's a narrative that began towards the end of the Ice Age but was foundational to many of the modern breeds we see today."Read the study in Nature.

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