Despite being one of the world’s most popular pets and a treasured member of the family in many cultures, the origins of dogs remain mysterious. Scientists know that they descended from gray wolves, but when and where this happened is unclear. Some studies say they may have arisen in Siberia, others say China or Europe, and still others point to multiple locations. The timing of this event (or these events) is also unknown. The oldest genetically confirmed dog lived about 11,000 years ago, but much older putative dogs have been found across Europe and the Middle East.
Now scientists have found that many of these animals were indeed dogs. Ancient DNA analysis of bones found in England, Switzerland, and Turkey reveals that the remains belong to dogs that lived between 14,000 and 16,000 years ago. The oldest dog is a puppy unearthed at a hunter-gatherer site known as Pinarbasi in central Turkey. At about 15,800 years old, it’s the oldest genetically confirmed dog to date, pushing back the definitive origin of dogs nearly 5000 years.
Remarkably, all of the dogs from these various regions are very similar genetically, suggesting they may represent the ancestral form of all dogs, at least in Europe. Greger Larson, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Oxford, an an author on the new work, suggests they may have been like a “Swiss Army knife”–able to perform a wide variety of jobs for a wide variety of peoples.
These people also appeared to treat their dogs in a way that would be familiar to many of us today. The Pinarbasi puppy was buried near humans, suggesting that these hunter-gatherers may have viewed them as a fellow member of their society. And a dog jaw bone recovered from the English site–known as Gough’s Cave–shows signs of piercing after the animal died. The people here made cups from human skulls, and the piercing of the dog bone suggests they treated their canine companions similar to how they treated their fellow humans.
The work doesn’t solve the ultimate mystery of where and when dogs arose, but it does suggest that our canine pals have been with us a long, long time–and that our relationship with them has always been special.