Dogs have been working alongside humans for much longer than we thought

Ephrat Livni

June 23, 2017


It’s time to rewrite the record on dogs with jobs. We all know humans have long bred canines into all sizes and shapes to do our bidding—even if that’s just sitting in a queen’s sleeve or a celebrity’s purse. But we didn’t know for how long we’d been doing it.

Previously, researchers believed that canine breeding began 7,000 years ago with herding dogs in the Near East. New discoveries, published this May in the Journal of Archaeology, suggest the first work dogs were actually designed in Siberia at least 9,000 years ago, based on fossil carbon dating and the shape of the bones.

Vladimir Pitulko, an archaeologist at the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, has been excavating bones on Zhokhov Island in Siberia since 1989. He long suspected that they belonged to dogs bred for sledding. In an effort to confirm exactly what type of animal a particular collection of bones belonged to, he compared the fossils of 11 individual animal remains to known wolf and modern Siberian husky bones found in the area.

The archaeologist wasn’t surprised to find that the ancient bones did indeed belong to canines. He was surprised to see evidence of a breeding program indicating dogs were designed for specific functions.

More:
https://qz.com/1012526/the-dog-domestication-timeline-gets-an-update-thanks-to-new-discoveries-of-canines-bred-for-work-in-siberia-9000-years-ago/