Humans probably domesticated dogs in Asia, but some dogs also carry genes from an ancient population in the Middle East.
Dogs weren’t always our best friends. Humans domesticated them from gray wolves over 15,000 years ago. However, it’s still not clear where this happened.shows that all dogs share genetic ancestry with ancient wolves from East Asia. But some dogs share additional ancestry with wolves from the Middle East. Researchers suggest that dogs might have been domesticated twice, or dogs from Asia interbred with wild wolves in the Middle East as they migrated westward.
The unprecedented timescale of the genomic analysis helps researchers see “evolution play out in real time rather than trying to reconstruct it from DNA today,” says Pontus Skoglund, senior author and group leader at the Francis Crick InstituteThe team discovered that ancient wolves were genetically connected across continents during the ice age. This means any adaptations that arose in one area could quickly spread through the entire species, even across continents.
This connection in wolves also explains some conundrums about dog domestication. Many experts assumed that the wolf population that produced the first dogs went extinct because no modern-day wolves match dog genetic ancestry. However, wolf genes are constantly blending across continents, which could mask the relationship between the two genes.