Dogs may have been domesticated in Siberia

Dogs may have been domesticated in Siberia
Dogs may have been domesticated in Siberia
Anonim

A new analysis of DNA isolated from ancient remains of dogs showed that they were domesticated in Siberia about 23 thousand years ago. From here they spread to the west and east, together with their newly acquired masters crossed the then frozen Bering Strait and ended up in America. This picture is described by the authors of a new article published in the journal PNAS.

Indeed, dogs were the first domesticated animals, but many details of this process remain a mystery. Their genome is so confused today that attempts to trace the origin of the very first domesticated populations point to China or Europe and give dates from 10 thousand to 30 thousand years ago, and some experts even believe that the domestication of wolves happened more than once.

The problem is that specialists often cannot distinguish the remains of Pleistocene dogs from wolves, with which they had not yet parted too much either anatomically or genetically. Therefore, the authors of the new work considered the genetic evolution of dogs in parallel with the analogous evolution of the ancient inhabitants of Siberia, Beringia and North America. Scientists have found that the first groups of hunters with dogs appeared in the New World about 15 thousand years ago, and their prehistory can be traced back to Siberia 22, 8 thousand years ago.

This was the period of the maximum of the last glaciation, when the entire considered region remained extremely unfavorable for life, cold and dry. It was these conditions that could have forced populations of wolves to stay close to people in order to find bones and scraps, and interact more and more actively with them. Over time, this led to the development of closer relationships and the transformation of wild predators into new, already domesticated animals.

From here began their settlement both to the west and to the east, right up to America. “We have known for a long time that the first people on the continent already possessed highly advanced technologies for hunting, processing stone and other materials and were fully prepared for new challenges,” says David Meltzer, one of the authors of the new work. "The dogs that have accompanied them since their arrival in a completely new world could be as important a part of this culture as the stone tools that people carried with them."

Recommended: