Dogs domesticated over 20 thousands years ago in Europe.

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New DNA study of wolfs and dogs concluded that dogs were domesticated between 19 and 32 thousands years ago and most likely in Europe. It turned that dog was a best friend of a hunter first, not a farmer.
a new study that appeared today in Science suggesting that dogs became domesticated from wolves in Europe, rather than East Asia, and tens of thousands of years earlier than previously believed.Modern dogs descending from wolves isn’t a new idea. As Carl Zimmer explains at the New York Times:
Scientists have long agreed that the closest living relatives of dogs are wolves, their link confirmed by both anatomy and DNA. Somewhere, at some point, some wolves became domesticated. They evolved not only a different body shape, but also a different behavior. Instead of traveling in a pack to hunt down prey, dogs began lingering around humans. Eventually, those humans bred them into their many forms, from shar-peis to Newfoundlands.
The question is when. Previous findings had suggested that canine domestication was linked to humans’ discovery/invention of agriculture. But that was under 10,000 years ago, suggesting that dogs might be a relatively recent addition to the animal kingdom. The new research posits the opposite: that wolves started dogging it up tens of thousands of years earlier, while humans were still mostly hunter-gatherers.
New Tricks on Old Dogs

To arrive at the new figure, the authors studied 10 ancient wolf-like fossils and 8 doglike fossils, analyzing their mitochondrial DNA. This type of DNA is much more prevalent in ancient remains than nuclear DNA is. That ancient DNA was then compared to DNA from modern dogs, wolves and coyotes. The modern dogs clustered into four distinct groups, senior author Robert Wayne of the University of California, Los Angeles, told NPR:
“Three of them group with our ancient dog or wolf sequences from Europe. One of them groups with modern wolf sequences but still from Europe,” says Wayne. “We really didn’t have any other conclusion that we could make except that dogs seemed to be domesticated in Europe.”
The researchers concluded that domestication took place between 19,000 and 32,000 years ago.
A Dog’s Life

But things aren’t as simple as they seem. Peter Savolainen of the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden, proponent of a rival theory that dogs originated in East Asia, told Carl Zimmer:
“It’s not a correct scientific study, because it’s geographically biased,” he said. The study lacks ancient DNA from fossils from East Asia or the Middle East, and so it’s not possible to tell whether the roots of dog evolution are anchored in those regions. “You just need to have samples from everywhere,” Dr. Savolainen said.
Like any unsettled matter in science, all we can do is study the existing evidence and wait for more research and analysis. Wayne, for his part, is planning on following up by studying the nuclear DNA of the ancient animals, a much more difficult task, and looking for fossils outside Europe — but he’s sure it won’t change today’s main finding.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d...sticated-in-europe-dna-suggests/#.Uo0Lw9Lkt8E
 
New DNA study of wolfs and dogs concluded that dogs were domesticated between 19 and 32 thousands years ago and most likely in Europe. It turned that dog was a best friend of a hunter first, not a farmer.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d...sticated-in-europe-dna-suggests/#.Uo0Lw9Lkt8E

DNA analysis will no doubt show when humans first domesticated dogs, although it may be difficult to be certain, since it probably happened multiple times, and dogs no doubt cross-bred with wolves at times, which would make it difficult to be certain. But human use of dogs as sentries may go back to the dawn of time. I saw a nature show that depicted baboons that had stolen baby wild dogs and raised them, so that the dogs considered themselves part of the baboon troop, and would act as sentries for the baboons.
 
New DNA study of wolfs and dogs concluded that dogs were domesticated between 19 and 32 thousands years ago and most likely in Europe. It turned that dog was a best friend of a hunter first, not a farmer.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d...sticated-in-europe-dna-suggests/#.Uo0Lw9Lkt8E
It makes sense, because wolf is a hunter. Nothing is better than a symbiotic relationship of two hunters with sets of different skills. Wolf has a superior sense of smell, tracking and fast run/attack, humans have long range weapon (bow), poison, traps, long distance stamina, and superior intelligence.
 
the first dog discovered was 31.7 ka in Goyet cave, Belgium
probably the gravettians introduced the dog in Europe

present races of bread dogs have little to do with that
all these dog races have been bread in only 3-400 years

evolution goes very fast with dogs ..
 
A new study just published in the journal Science (Frantz et al. 2016) argues that dogs were domesticated twice: once East Asia c. 14,000 years ago and once in Europe before that. They tested the mtDNA of a 5,000 year-old dog from Newgrange in Ireland and it turns out that it is unrelated to that of all modern dogs or to any surviving race of wolf.

In other words, Europeans domesticated dogs first (e.g. in Goyet) from a subspecies of wolf that is now extinct, but all modern dogs carry East Asian mtDNA. That is because mtDNA is prone to fast natural selection as it impacts energy production, and some haplogroups can disappear quickly. This is also the case with humans. Although it is now proven with certainty that all non-Africans (and some Africans) carry Neanderthal DNA, no Neanderthal mtDNA has ever been found to date.

Here is the article from the Guardian.
 
A new study just published in the journal Science (Frantz et al. 2016) argues that dogs were domesticated twice: once East Asia c. 14,000 years ago and once in Europe before that. They tested the mtDNA of a 5,000 year-old dog from Newgrange in Ireland and it turns out that it is unrelated to that of all modern dogs or to any surviving race of wolf.

In other words, Europeans domesticated dogs first (e.g. in Goyet) from a subspecies of wolf that is now extinct, but all modern dogs carry East Asian mtDNA. That is because mtDNA is prone to fast natural selection as it impacts energy production, and some haplogroups can disappear quickly. This is also the case with humans. Although it is now proven with certainty that all non-Africans (and some Africans) carry Neanderthal DNA, no Neanderthal mtDNA has ever been found to date.

Here is the article from the Guardian.

the Kebarans in the southern Levant 20 ka would also have had dogs

The Kebaran culture, with its use of microliths, is associated with the use of the bow and arrow and the domestication of the dog[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kebaran

Dogs are quite easy to domesticate. It looks like many lines went extinct.
As mentioned in my post n° 4, present day dogs have a very young common ancestor.
 
Is the Newgrange dog a West Eurasian dog or an East Asian?
 
the Kebarans in the southern Levant 20 ka would also have had dogs

The Kebaran culture, with its use of microliths, is associated with the use of the bow and arrow and the domestication of the dog[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kebaran

Dogs are quite easy to domesticate. It looks like many lines went extinct.
As mentioned in my post n° 4, present day dogs have a very young common ancestor.
Well, dogs are domesticated woleves, unless they go wild again. I know what you meant. ;) HGs and wolfs combo works so good that I'm sure domestication of wolf (or wolf like cousins) happened many times on every continent. We should wait for genetic research of ancient dogs to see the full picture.
 
bump... still waiting on answer to my question.
 

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