A team of Spanish researchers has dated the bone of the oldest domesticated dog, revealing that humans have been friends with their canine companions for over 17,000 years. This discovery indicates that dogs have been living alongside humans far longer than previously believed. The debate among scientists about when exactly humans domesticated dogs has persisted for decades. The humerus bone of a canid (wolf-like dog), discovered in the Erralla cave in Spain back in 1985, has shed light on the timeline of our four-legged friends’ domestication. The bone has finally received a verdict from scientists. So, when and how did dogs separate from their wolf ancestors and become domesticated? Using this ancient fractured bone from a Spanish cave, researchers have provided a new answer to this question.
A team from the University of the Basque Country has established when our relationship with companion dogs began. Thanks to cutting-edge scientific analysis methods, the researchers made a discovery that would have been impossible 37 years ago. It is now known that the humerus bone from the Erralla cave dates back between 17,410 and 17,096 years. The researchers assert that this bone belongs not to a wolf, but to a dog, Canis Familiaris (domestic dog). This ancient humerus is the oldest dog bone ever examined by scientists.
To uncover this information, the team, led by geneticist and anthropologist Montserrat Hervella, primarily used radiocarbon dating. This method allowed them to pinpoint when this animal lived on Earth. Genetic and morphological analyses helped the scientists determine the species. The Canis Familiaris that owned the bone shared a mitochondrial lineage with other dogs from the Magdalenian period of the Upper Paleolithic (17,000-9,000 years ago), whose remains have been found in other regions of Western Europe. For instance, bones from Gironde (France) were dated to between 15,114 and 14,237 years ago, while those from Bonn-Oberkassel (Germany) were dated to between 14,809 and 13,319 years ago.
Wolves began to bond with humans and self-domesticate during the last glacial maximum (around 22,000 years ago), when the Earth experienced extreme cold. According to Professor of Archaeology Conchi de la Rua, these results increase the likelihood that the domestication of wolves occurred earlier than previously thought, at least in Western Europe, “where the interaction of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers with wild species, such as wolves, may have been intensified in glacial refugia (such as the Franco-Cantabrian region) during this climatic crisis.” It’s worth noting that recent studies by other research teams have suggested that dog domestication occurred multiple times, as reported by ScienceAlert.