The domestication of wild wolves that resulted in all the dog breeds we know today might have happened twice in different parts of Eurasia, once in Europe and once in the Far East, according to a study published in the journal Science.
So far there were two theories in the science community: one that points to the origin of the domestication of man's best friend in Europe and another one in China. The new study by an international group of researchers led by the University of Oxford, Britain, combines both theories.
Supported by funding from the European Research Council and the Natural Environment Research Council, scientists compared the genetic data of today's dogs and bones of dogs that lived in different parts of the world thousands of years ago and concluded that dogs may have emerged independently, from two separate wolf groups that lived in two different parts of the continent, which led to the theory they may have been domesticated twice.
"We need to reconsider the number of times dogs were domesticated independently. Maybe the reason there hasn't yet been a consensus about where dogs were domesticated is because everyone has been a little bit right," said Greger Larson, professor at the University of Oxford.
The researchers reconstructed the genome of a 4800-year-old medium-sized dog from bones excavated in Ireland, as well as obtained the DNA of another 59 dogs living between 14,000 to 3000 years ago, and compared them with the genetic signature of more than 2500 modern dogs.
The results show a genetic separation between the populations of modern dogs living in Europe and the Far East, as well as the appearance of early dogs in both places more than 12,000 years ago, however in Central Asia no earlier than 8000 years ago.
Still, the East Asian dogs that originated in China migrated with humans and dispersed into Europe, where they mixed with and mostly even replaced the ancient European dogs.
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