The dogs became "man's best friend 'in Europe - The Mundo.es

dogs originated in wolves but how these animals came to live with people? How and where changes occurred that made that they became a threat for man to become what many consider his best friend? An international team of researchers participating in the National Research Council (CSIC) offers this week in the journal Science a new theory on the domestication of dogs developed after comparing genetic analysis of fossil canids with those of modern animals.

This is an issue that has been the subject of debate and controversy among scientists for many years. Genetic information available suggested that the process of domestication began in Asia 13,000-14,000 years ago while in Europe and Siberia found fossil remains of animals like dogs to more than 30,000 years old.

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wolf fossil found in Belgium than 26,000 years old

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According say researchers led by Olaf Thalmann, University of Turku (Finland), the first to domesticate dogs were hunter-gatherers who lived in the territory of modern Europe between 32,100 and 18,800 years. “We imagine that then there was a gradual process that gave rise to modern dogs,” he told WORLD Thalmann, author of the study.

It was thought that the first domesticated dogs came from Asia, particularly China and proposed Middle East. Its origin is linked to the beginning of agricultural practices, according to other researchers proposed, would have appealed to the wolves to areas where humans settled, ushering in the first interactions between them. The oldest dog fossils have been found in the Middle East and East Asia have, at most 13,000 years old.

However, the Science study argues that domestication occurred before and it happened in Europe. As proposed, the hunter-gatherers, who fed both wild plants and animals they hunted, they would have been those who began to relate to them. Perhaps, they suggest, the wolves were approaching humans because they could feed on the remains of dead animals that hunters left behind.

From Europe to the world

From that time, these domesticated species probably spread to other parts of the world, such as America, while they did the first humans, as genetic analysis of fossils shows three dogs Columbian origin common Old World dogs . “Our research refutes recent studies suggest that domestication was linked to agriculture, through adaptation dog’s digestive system to a diet rich in starch. Agriculture caused major changes in the domestication process, but our data show that this process began long before “, explained through an email Francesc Lopez-Giraldez, bioinformatics researcher at Yale University (USA) and co-author of the study. “We have to understand the domestication as a continuous and long (and is still happening), rather than a specific time event.”

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Dog Fossil

8500 years old found in Illinois (USA)

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“We were surprised that most European origin that dogs arose in the context of hunter-gatherer societies. This hypothesis is not really new, since the zooarchaeologists long have considered. Moreover, genetic samples suggest originated prior to the agricultural revolution, “says Thalmann.

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In reaching this conclusion, mitochondrial DNA comparararon 18 canid fossils from caves and archaeological deBélgica, Russia, Argentina, USA, Switzerland, Alaska and Germany, as well as 20 wolves genetic information present in Eurasia and America.

oldest fossils have been found in Belgium and Russia. Two of the three Belgian analyzed fossils belong to prehistoric wolves (from 30,000 to 26,000 years, respectively) and the other at a prehistoric animal (36,000 years old), known as the Goyet dog. Scientists believe that both this issue as another Razboinichya found in Russian cave (33,500 years) may represent episodes of domestication that failed to culminate.

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Two modern dogs: Higgins (i) and Albi (d).

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“The main problem with the sample’s classification as Goyet dog or a wolf. There is no consensus and the debate remains open. In our analysis appears as a sister group to the dogs and modern wolves, rather than a direct ancestor of them. Therefore, a hypothesis we have is that it is a representative of a domestication process aborted (no genetic trace in current dogs) or a wolf population phenotypically different from current and previously unrecognized, “explains Lopez-Giraldez.

“This project started many years ago with those who were the oldest remains then, with smaller fragments of DNA. was growing to include more archaeological and use new techniques for sequencing ancient DNA that are now available and not even imagined that we could use when we started, “he recalls from the U.S. Jennifer Leonard, CSIC researcher at the Biological Station of Doñana.

Genetic analyzes reveal that modern dogs are closely linked to prehistoric canids whose fossils were unearthed in Europe. This relationship, says Leonard, is greater than that between prehistoric canids European and Asian wolves, which would show that the origin of the dog is in the domestication of wolves in Europe and Asia.

Scientists were able to analyze the remains found in Asia: “It would have been interesting they can be incorporated. Unfortunately we were not allowed access to the fossils of Southeast Asia . had only limited access to Israel and samples not obtained mitochondrial sequences of these two samples.’s of the Middle East and Southeast Asia are considerably younger in age, from 8000 to 13,000 years, the European samples used in our study, so it is less likely to provide information about the early steps in the process of domestication, “says Lopez-Giraldez.

“Domestication has been very important for the development of human settlements and the development of culture” , says “The dog was the first domesticated species and to understand the process is important for understanding our own culture, “says Leonard.