Dogs came from at least two different populations of ancient wolves, new research reveals.
One originated in eastern Eurasia[/B] and the other in the Middle East and southwestern Eurasia, where the dogs of southern Europe originated, according to new international research by geneticists and archaeologists.
The new study, led by Dr. Pontus Skoglund of the Francis Crick Institute in London and published in the journal Nature, analyzed the genomes of 72 ancient wolves that lived over a 100,000-year period in Europe, Siberia and North America during the Late Pleistocene period some 129,000 to 11,700 years ago. Archaeologists from 16 countries contributed to the study, as well as nine ancient DNA analysis laboratories.
Comparative analysis of the genomes concluded that both ancient dogs and modern dogs are genetically more similar to ancient Asian than European wolves, an indication that domestication originally occurred somewhere in the East.
At the same time, however, evidence was found that two separate populations of ancient wolves contributed DNA to the dogs. Early dogs from northeastern Europe, Siberia and the Americas appear to have up to almost 100% unique ancestry from the East, but early dogs from the Middle East, Africa and southern Europe appear to be about 50% descended from another group of Middle Eastern wolves.
This may be because the dogs were domesticated more than once, with different populations of them subsequently mixing.
Alternatively, it is possible that there was one domestication, but the subsequent dual origin of dogs is due to an early population of dogs then mixing with wild wolves of western Eurasia.
Almost all modern dogs today appear to have a dual origin, with the earliest found in Israel dating back to about 7,000 years ago.
The study, as reported by the Athens News Agency, is another step towards solving the mystery of where man's "best friends" were domesticated, one of the biggest questions of human prehistory.
Dogs[/B] are descended from the grey wolf (Canis lupus) and their domestication is estimated to have occurred during the Ice Age 15,000 to 30,000 years ago.
The grey wolf, according to Nature, is believed to have been the first wild species from which a domesticated species evolved.
It remains unknown, however, exactly where this happened and whether it was a single location or many where domestication took place.
Most other animals were domesticated after the advent of agriculture, but dogs were domesticated while humans were still hunter-gatherers.
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