A 10,000 dog found at the Koster site in western Illinois. (photo by Del Baston, courtesy Center for American Archeology)

Dogs remain one of the biggest mysteries of domestication. Despite decades of research, we still don’t know where they came from–or even when they arose. But a couple of new studies are shedding light on when our relationship with dogs may have begun, and why it started.

The first concerns a handful of graves in western Illinois. In the 1960s and 70s, archaeologists excavated two sites here–Koster and Sitwell II–which were home to hunter-gatherers thousands of years ago. The researchers discovered the remains of five dogs curled up in shallow pits. Dating of the bones–reported last week in bioRxiv–reveals that they are about 10,000 years old.  That makes these the oldest solo dog burials in the world–and the canines the oldest dogs known in the Americas.

We don’t know what these ancient people used these dogs for, but the fact that the animals were buried alone, and that the bones showed no sign of butchering, indicates these humans had a close relationship with their canines. It’s likely they used them to hunt deer and other small game in a nearby forest; they may also have used them to guard their campsites and pull supplies. They may even have relied on them for warmth and companionship.

Given that dogs arose at least 16,000 years ago, the Koster and Sitwell II dogs were hardly among the first dogs people interacted with. But they may have shared ancestry with the world’s first dogs.

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Dog art found in Shuwaymis, Saudi Arabia may date back more than 8,000 years. (Credit: M.Guagnin et al., Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 2017)

Humans domesticated dogs somewhere between 15,000 and 30,000 years ago. But although today’s dogs are family members, service animals, and war vets, we know little about man’s early relationship with canines. Now a new finding is providing a window into these bygone days.

Researchers have discovered images of dogs carved into rocks in the Saudi Arabian desert. An analysis suggests that the art may date back more than 8,000 years, which would make these the oldest depictions of dogs in the archaeological record. All of the canines are medium-sized and resemble the Canaan dog—a breed built for the desert—suggesting that humans may have bred these animals for the climate. All also appear to be hunting dogs, taking down ibex and gazelle, and even facing off against wild donkeys. And, perhaps most significantly, many seem to be tethered to the waists of human hunters by leashes.

All of this suggests that these early desert dogs were important hunting companions for humans who lived in this arid region thousands of years ago. They may have been so important, in fact—able to take down or corral animals too fast or too strong for humans—that people may not have been able to survive in this place without the aid of canines. And the leashes suggest that hunters may not have only used these dogs, but found a way to train them. (The leashes are also the oldest depicted on record, perhaps by 3,000 years or more.)

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(Credit: Jon Bodsworth / Wikimedia Commons)

If you think cats came from Egypt, you’re both about a decade out of touch as well as eerily prescient. For years, historians believed that cats were domesticated in ancient Egypt. The thinking made sense: The felines are omnipresent in this ancient civilization, from tomb paintings to sculptures to mummies. The Egyptians adored their cats, so much so that they came to consider them gods. But archaeologists burst this bubble in 2004, when they reported finding the grave of a human buried with a cat on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus dating back 9500 years—thousands of years before Egypt existed.

Now, a new study has put Egypt back on the map. By analyzing the remains of more than 200 ancient felines, scientists have discovered that there may have been two epicenters of cat domestication: One in Turkey (notably close to Cyprus) around 10,000 years ago, and one in Egypt thousands of years later. At the very least, it appears that by breeding cats on a massive scale, the ancient Egyptians further tamed the cat, transforming it from a territorial and antisocial feline into today’s couch potato. Whether they further refined cats that originally came from Turkey or domesticated their own cats from a local population of wildcats is unclear. Scientists hope to answer this with further research.

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A Siberian Husky sled dog. (Credit: AWeith / Wikimedia Commons)

Scientists still haven’t figured out when–or even where–dogs were domesticated, but they’re getting a bit closer to understanding why they were domesticated in the first place. A new study published this month in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports suggests that humans were breeding dogs for sledding as early as 9,000 years ago. The find, based on dog bones recovered from the remote Siberian island of Zhokhov, is the earliest evidence for dog breeding in the archaeological record. (The next closest example is herding dogs in the Near East, which were bred about 7000 years ago.)

The hunter-gatherers who lived on this island tracked reindeer across vast, frozen plains, and they needed a way to get around quickly. Researchers had previously found dog bones on the island, as well as the remains of wooden sleds, suggesting that the ancient Zhokhovians bred dogs for sledding. But the new study firms up the connection. And because some experts believe dogs first appeared about 15,000 years ago, the research also suggests that we may have initially domesticated these animals to work for us. In the Zhokhovians case, it was for sledding, but other peoples may have bred early dogs to help them hunt down small game or even to guard their campsite. (The people of Zhokhov also appear to have bred dogs to hunt polar bears).

What’s most fascinating is that the work may help explain why we have pet dogs today instead of pet foxes or badgers. Those other animals likely hung around early human campsites (just as wolves did), but we never found a use for them. A similar story may apply to cats. I have written before about the 10,000-year-old village of Shillourokambos on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, where archaeologists found what may be the world’s oldest cat. The thinking is that the Shillourokambians brought in cats to help control their rodent problem–but they also did the same thing with foxes. The reason we don’t have pet foxes today, some speculate, is that they weren’t as useful (or friendly, or tamable, or perhaps cute) as cats.

And thus, cats and dogs may be with us today because a long time ago we took a look at them and realized they could be useful to us. And now, perhaps, it is we who are useful to them.

Ancient Roman hunting scene (Credit: Ad Meskens / Wikimedia Commons)

One of the most common assumptions about early dogs is that they were our hunting companions. Soon after they were domesticated–or perhaps the very reason they were domesticated in the first place–dogs helped us survive by tracking down and attacking everything from deer to woolly mammoths. There is very little evidence to support this assumption, however. Once people began making art that depicted hunting dogs (such as the Roman mosaic above) and writing about these activities, we knew for sure that dogs helped us hunt. But everything before that? Pure supposition.

That may be starting to change, thanks to a new study published last week about the Jomon hunter-gatherers of ancient Japan. The Jomon, who lived from about 16,000 to 2500 years ago, had dogs for this entire time–but they only revered these animals (burying them with the same pomp and circumstance they typically reserved for each other) for a fraction of this period. Significantly, this reverence coincided with a changing world that brought small game like deer and wild boar, which the dogs would have been ideally suited to hunt down. What’s more, the buried dogs appear to have hunting injuries, like broken teeth and bones. Thus, the study provides some of the first compelling evidence that ancient dogs were indeed our hunting companions.

So is this the smoking gun? Not quite. But more studies like this may help solidify the case that one of the primary roles of early dogs was to help us hunt, and thereby survive.