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TEXT: Dogs have been man’s best friend for 40,000 years: Humans tamed canine ancestors centuries earlier than first thought
(Sarah Griffiths for MailOnline and Ben Spenser for the Daily Mail)
It was thought humans first tamed the ancestors of domestic dogs in the Ice Age, between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago. But a new study has found our canine sidekicks have been our best friend for much longer.
A team of Swedish scientists discovered a divergence in the species may have occurred up to 40,000 years ago based on the genetic analysis of an ancient wolf bone. To early humans, the first domesticated wolves were hunting companions, fighting animals and beasts of burden. As they bred the animals, selecting those that best met their needs, the domestic and wild breeds diverged, and the animals’ genetic code became less and less similar.
Experts previously believed this divergence happened in the Mesolithic era – at a time when humans were transforming from hunters into farmers. But the new of research suggests the first domestic dogs may have dated back more than 20,000 years earlier, during the Late Stone Age.
Scientists from Swedish Museum of Natural History analyzed the DNA of a canine bone discovered in the Taimyr Peninsula, Siberia. They believe the bone, which has been radiocarbon dated to 35,000 years ago, belonged to a domesticated wolf – in effect one of the early dogs. Given the divergence between its DNA and wild wolves, they estimate its earliest domesticated ancestors could have lived 5,000 years before. And they say the animal represents the most recent common ancestor of modern wolves and dogs and could have been man’s best friend between 27,000 and 40,000 years ago.
Study author Love Dalén, whose research is published in the journal Current Biology, said: ‘Dogs may have been domesticated much earlier than is generally believed. The only other explanation is that there was a major divergence between two wolf populations at that time, and one of these populations subsequently gave rise to all modern wolves.’ But he said this second explanation less likely, since it would require that the second wolf population subsequently became extinct in the wild.
Co-author Pontus Skoglund, of Harvard Medical School in the US, added: ‘It is still possible that a population of wolves remained relatively untamed but tracked human groups to a large degree, for a long time.’
The researchers made these discoveries based on a small piece of bone picked up during an expedition to the Taimyr Peninsula. When they radiocarbon dated the bone, they realized it was a 35,000 years old. The DNA evidence showed that modern-day Siberian Huskies and Greenland sled dogs share an unusually large number of genes with the ancient Taimyr wolf.
Dr. Skoglund said: ‘The power of DNA can provide direct evidence that a Siberian Husky you see walking down the street shares ancestry with a wolf that roamed Northern Siberia 35,000 years ago. ‘To put that in perspective, this wolf lived just a few thousand years after Neanderthals disappeared from Europe and modern humans started populating Europe and Asia.’
(Disponível em: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article3091307/Dogs-man-s-best-friends-40-000-yearsHumans-tamed-canine-ancestors-centuries-earlierthought.html).
Dr. Pontus Skoglund, a researcher of Harvard Medical School, made some considerations on the genetic characteristics of the domestic Siberian Husky we see in the streets and of the wolf that lived in the Northern Siberia 35,000 years ago. According to his provocative observation, we may conclude that:
