Man’s Friend for at least 27,000 years – Vasabladet

The dog has been at the man’s side much longer than previously thought, new research shows.

That dog descended from the wolf all agree, but when the dog got the dog, so that is, there are divided opinions about.

Most studies point to an origin of about 16 000 years ago. But research now shows at institutions including Stockholm University and the Natural History Museum in Sweden that the dog is significantly older than that, between 27 000 and 40 000 years old. This is thanks to a small piece of bone that Love valley at the Natural History Museum found during an expedition on the Taimyr Peninsula in northern Siberia. – It seems as if the dog was domesticated much earlier than previously thought, he said.

At first, scientists thought that the piece of bone was not so old. But they sent still on the carbon-14 dating, and it turned out that it was about 35 000 years old. Genetic analysis of the genome shows that the bone belonged to a prehistoric wolf that was very closely related to the common ancestor of today’s wolves and dogs. But even if the dog began to be distinguished from wolves at least 27,000 years ago, researchers believe that it took some time before the dog became man’s best friend.

One theory is that it all started with that wolves voluntarily started to stay close to people to utilize leftover food.