The oldest known confirmed dog, aged 15,800 years, lived alongside hunter-gatherers in Neolithic Turkey, a genetic study reveals.
The discovery, combined with the examination of other prehistoric bones from Europe, confirms that the dog, the first domesticated animal, was part of human culture much earlier than the emergence of agriculture around 10,000 years ago. The skeleton from Pınarbaşı in Turkey is 5,000 years older than the next oldest, which lived in Siberia.
The findings do not provide a definitive answer to the major question of when and where the grey wolf (Canis lupus) was domesticated and evolved into the hundreds of dog breeds (Canis lupus familiaris) we know today.
Nevertheless, the findings strengthen previous suspicions that the dog first appeared in Asia and quickly spread to Europe.
The dog likely diverged from the grey wolf much earlier, between 18,000 and 24,000 years ago, though significant uncertainty remains, the researchers said.
Since the skeletons of dogs and wolves were very similar in the early stages of domestication, only genetic testing can distinguish between them. Claims of dog bones over 30,000 years old, based solely on morphological characteristics, have either been disproved by DNA analysis or remain unconfirmed.
The first study, led by researchers at the Francis Crick Institute in Britain, examined 261 ancient skeletons from various parts of Europe, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland, and Turkey. It is the largest study of its kind to date.
The researchers identified 95 wolves and 46 dogs, of which the oldest, aged 14,200 years, came from the Kesslerloch cave in Switzerland.
The second study, led by researchers from the Natural History Museum in London and Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, sequenced the DNA from bones found in Gough’s Cave in southwest England and a burial site at Pınarbaşı. The samples were found to belong to dogs, not wolves. Their genomes show striking similarities, suggesting that dogs spread rapidly across Europe and Western Asia.
Both the English and Turkish findings indicate that dogs held great significance for humans even then. At Pınarbaşı, the bones were found placed on top of the deceased in graves, while a dog skull at Gough’s Cave bore decorative holes similar to those found on human skulls from the same excavation.
The researchers believe that, in both humans and dogs, these holes were associated with ritual cannibalism of the dead.
According to an unpublished preliminary analysis by the Francis Crick Institute, the Pınarbaşı dog shows strong genetic similarities to the bones from Switzerland and Britain. This finding supports the theory that dogs from Europe and Western Asia share a common origin and did not arise from separate domestication events.
