image source, Getty Images
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- author, victoria gill
- author title, BBC News
If, like many people, you have a lazy, temperamental dog who likes to curl up on the couch, you may be surprised to learn that your pet’s ancestors were ferocious predators.
Now, important research has revealed that the transformation of wolves into domestic dogs began in the Middle Stone Age, much earlier than previously thought.
“Looking at a Chihuahua is like looking at a wolf that has been modified by living with humans for too long,” lead researcher Arowen Evin of the University of Montpellier told the BBC.
She and her colleagues discovered that changes in our pets that began in the 19th century through selective breeding actually began more than 10,000 years ago.
About research published in magazines sciencethis international team of researchers focused on the skull of a prehistoric dog.
For more than a decade, they studied and scanned bones spanning 50,000 years of dog evolution.
They created 3D digital models of each of the more than 600 skulls they examined and compared certain characteristics of ancient and modern dogs and their wild relatives.
The researchers found that the shape of the dog’s skeleton began to change about 11,000 years ago, just after the last ice age.
Slender, wolf-like dogs still existed, but there were also many short-nosed, broad-headed, stocky dogs.
image source, Ameen
The study’s other lead researcher, Carly Ameen from the University of Exeter, explained to the BBC that almost half of the diversity seen in modern dog breeds was already present in mid-Stone Age dog populations.
“It’s really surprising because we started with the idea that it was the Kennel Club in England in the 19th century that started this change,” he explained.
Domestication: an ancient mystery
Dogs were the first domesticated animals.
There is evidence that humans have coexisted closely with dogs for at least 30,000 years. Where and why this close relationship began is still a mystery.
This study uncovered some of the first physical evidence that dogs have transformed into the diverse pets, pets, and working animals we know today.
And the digital scans of the skulls the researchers studied will allow them to answer further questions about the evolutionary forces that drove domestication.
Some researchers suggest that the encounter between humans and wolves was largely coincidental, with wolves settling on the outskirts of hunter-gatherer societies in search of food.
Domesticated wolves had access to more food, and humans gradually came to rely on wolves to clean up animal carcasses and sound the alarm if predators were approaching.
As for why this changed the dog’s appearance, Ameen said there were probably several reasons.
While the study doesn’t rule out that our ancestors preferred square heads and cute flat noses, Ameen explains, “It was probably a combination of interaction with humans, adaptation to different environments and different types of diets, all of which contributed to the explosion in diversity that we observed.”
image source, Getty Images
“It is difficult to determine which of these factors was most important,” he added.
For tens of thousands of years, human history and dog history have been intertwined.
In another article published in the same issue of the magazine sciencea research group led by Chinese scientists studied the ancient DNA of dogs that lived in Siberia, the central Eurasian steppes, and northwestern China between 9,700 and 870 years ago.
They concluded that movements of domestic dogs in the region often coincide with movements of people such as hunter-gatherers, farmers, and nomads.
Thus, our dogs have traveled with us and integrated into our society for thousands of years.
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