The Independent How modern pet dogs originated from wolves in Ice Age Siberia

How modern pet dogs originated from wolves in Ice Age Siberia David Keys reports on new research into the early beginnings of cuddly canines – and the long intertwined history between man and his best friend New research appears to have traced the earliest dogs to around 21,000BC

Man’s best friend – our four-legged canine pets – originated as Siberian wolves, according to new scientific research. Until now, scientists only knew that dogs had evolved out of a wolf population somewhere in Asia or Europe – but the new research has now pinpointed the specific region where that occurred and the approximate date that the transformation took place. A combination of DNA and archaeological evidence has revealed that every poodle, dachshund, chihuahua, alsatian and every other type of dog in the world originated as grey wolves in eastern Siberia in around 21,000BC. What's more, it's likely that their initial domestication took place entirely naturally – and was not deliberately engineered by humans. The archaeological and DNA research has just been published in the US Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The new investigation, carried out by British, American and French scientists, suggests that the close relationship between dogs and humans was initially triggered by climatic challenges. At the height of the last Ice Age (around 21,000 to 17,000 BC), temperatures dropped and precipitation declined to such an extent in Siberia that many of the wolf's normal prey (animals like reindeer, musk oxen, wild horses, bison and others) became locally extinct or at least much less numerous. This appears to have forced some desperate yet enterprising wolves to start scavenging around human encampments – looking for bones and gristle, which the humans had discarded. Wolves have an ability to rapidly learn new skills and then develop new economic and cultural specialisms which can then be passed down through succeeding wolf generations. Wolves born into such economically specialist lineages tend only to mate with others from the same skill-set background. Genetic evidence shows that, as a result, after dozens of generations, their DNA begins to be group specific (ie different from other groups of wolves with other different skill-set economies and cultures). This is precisely what seems to have occurred to those Siberian grey wolves whose descendants were destined to gradually evolve into the first dogs.