Our canine companions have their ancestry in wild packs of wolves. But scientists are still sorting out when dogs were first domesticated, which launched them on a genetic trajectory distinct from wolves.
To pinpoint dog origins, an international team of researchers led by the Francis Crick Institute, the University of East Anglia, and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology recently analyzed DNA from 216 samples of ancient canine skeletal remains from across Europe—some of which dated to more than 10,000 years ago. Because the remains were contaminated with DNA from microbes that had colonized them, advanced techniques were required to extract any remaining dog DNA.
“We used a technique called ‘hybridization capture’ to boost the amount of usable DNA,” explained study author and evolutionary genomicist Anders Bergström in a press release. “This involved identifying genetic variants that are present in current-day grey wolves and ‘fishing’ only these out of the ancient canid samples.”
Read more: “The Dark Side of Wolf Reintroduction”
A dog’s remains from Kesslerloch Cave in Switzerland were dated to 14,200 years old, making it one of the oldest known dogs in Europe. It proved genetically more similar to European dogs than to Asian dogs, showing that some differentiation had already occurred and that dogs were likely already domesticated at a time of hunter-gatherer lifestyles and before the advent of farming in Europe.
When farmers migrated from Southwest Asia into Europe during the Neolithic (beginning about 10,000 years ago) with their domestic animals, they brought their own dogs, which mixed with the local hunter-gatherers’ dogs. The researchers, based on analysis of DNA from modern European dogs, attributed about half of the dogs’ ancestry to those hunter-gatherer pups that were around before farming.
“Most of the dogs running about in a local park today trace some of their ancestry to dogs living in Europe over 14,000 years ago,” said senior study author Pontus Skoglund. “It’s fascinating that we’ve walked alongside each other for so many thousands of years, despite considerable changes in human lifestyles.”
Dogs: Not just man’s best friend. But seemingly our best friend for time immemorial. 
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