Scientists argue about when dogs became domestic

Dogs have been living next to humans for tens of thousands of years. Thanks to genetic studies, it became known that they came from wild wolves, but it is still not clear how and when exactly this happened. Recently, scientists studied the oldest found remains of domestic dogs and conducted their genetic analysis to find out how much they are related to each other. Their data contradict the prevailing opinion of the most probable theory of domestication of dogs.

Version one: two foci

Last year, a scientific article was published that the domestication of dogs occurred twice: in the east and in the west. According to researchers, about 14,000 - 6,000 years ago, this gap between canine groups already existed. But when the remains of dogs that were even older than the indicated age were found at the same time in the east and in the west, it became clear that these populations were never one group of dogs, which were subsequently divided. Then, when people migrated from east to west, the eastern dogs mixed with the western ones, displacing their genes and creating the illusion of a single line.

A new study contradicts this hypothesis. The ancient German canine remains that the researchers studied have a thousand-year age difference and a minimum of genetic changes. This picture does not look like a different group of dogs is jumbled into the genetic line.

Version two: they came from the west

New evidence suggests that domestication happened once, about 20,000 - 40,000 years ago, and dogs spread from there. Populations in the east and west became more genetically distinct from each other over time, but migration between east and west allowed the two previously related groups to mix again with each other. This explains why in the genes of the western dog population there are no strong changes over a long period of time: there simply was no unique eastern group of dogs that joined the population. It's just about family reunion.

The very mechanism of domestication of dogs is approximately understandable: they kept the "puppy" character for as long as possible. Therefore, domestic dogs always remain a little puppies - cute and playful.