Comments on: Dogs, domesticated before agriculture

By: Steve Sailer

Steve Sailer — Sat, 27 Oct 2012 08:49:41 +0000

The farther back dogs were domesticated, the more time for humans to co-evolve with their canine helpmates. For example, maybe we used to be better at smelling, but outsourced this task to our dogs, freeing up human brain real estate to … well, I don’t know, but it might have been something important.

By: kittenz

kittenz — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 00:45:42 +0000

One thing I’ve always wondered about. I think that the domestication event that produced dogs began many thousands of years ago, probably in many different places at many different times, with varying degrees of success. But I wonder why we don’t see more dogs in prehistoric art? We don’t see a lot of human figures, either, though. Perhaps people were so accustomed to the presence of dogs that they thought of them as “part of the family”. It’s odd, though. The only early representations of dogs in art that I know of are from Australia and (I think) from northern Africa.

By: Doggerland

Doggerland — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 11:17:55 +0000

AFAIK, the first/oldest found dog bones are from Belgium around 30.000 yrs ago (then Russia, about 14.000 yrs ago) and there are tracks of a child AND of a dog, walking together in a cave, about 26.000 yrs ago in France, that could support the idea of a domesticated animal:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27240370/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/worlds-first-dog-lived-years-ago-ate-big/

By: Dave Webb

Dave Webb — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 06:51:56 +0000

It’s generally accepted that Old World dogs had been domesticated by the Mesolithic, and were the first domesticate. There was an academic paper some years back (~8-9) that offered evidence suggesting dogs may have been domesticated as early as 90,000 years ago. More recently, some evidence from Eurasia points to dates in the late Pleistocene sometime after 30-35,000 years ago. Bottom line? Dogs had been domesticated by Mesolithic times, but the earliest might have been domesticated 10,000 years earlier, perhaps even more.

By: Dm

Dm — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 18:53:12 +0000

Old Canis familaris has lost its species status, and became a subspecies of Canis lupus, all the way back in 1993. Of course there are still people who disagree, mostly on emtional grounds. In any case a subspecies status shouldn’t be taken as a statement that modern dogs literally evolved from modern wolves. But their ancestors must have differed to no greater extent than subspecies do.

In any case, with the overwhelming bottlenecking, inbreeding, and selection, wouldn’t it be next to impossible to decipher the canine genetic history with contemporary DNA specimens? All the drift is too much in the way IMVHO, and until the actual ancient dog DNA is studied (if ever), we’ll remain largely clueless.

By: Karl Zimmerman

Karl Zimmerman — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 17:41:19 +0000

Along the same lines, here's an old article from Darren Naish summarizing the data which makes a direct connection between dogs and grey wolves doubtful.

By: John Emerson

John Emerson — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 17:24:14 +0000

Is there place-and-time series somewhere for the domestication of various animals? I have books on the camel and on the horse / ass / onager, and scattered information about other beasts, but a consensus overview would be nice.

By: Razib Khan

Razib Khan — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 16:49:11 +0000

#2, genetics doesn’t support it to my kowledge. and 200-500 K isn’t THAT long in the past either. don’t know off the top of my head how far back gray wolves are as a monophyletic lineage, but i think it’s further back than that.

By: Hermenauta

Hermenauta — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 15:35:19 +0000

I´m no specialist in these matters, but there is a line of reasoning that says dogs do not evolved from wolves but from another canid that separated from the wolf line much earlier:

http://www.nonlineardogs.com/100MostSillyPart1.html

Seems pretty reasonable to me, but I don´t know if genetic evidence supports that.