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The landscape of what early relationships between canines and humans looked like is now becoming clearer, as a study published in Science on October 30 uses DNA evidence to explain migrational partnerships between dogs and humans going back to the end of the last ice age, around 11,000 years ago.
To understand how ancient hunter-gatherer societies might have associated with early dogs, a research team analyzed the genomes from the remains of ancient dogs representing 27 species. The time when the dogs lived spanned from the last ice age to about 800 years ago. These sequences were then compared to the genomes from ancient humans from the same time period and regions.
Trying to marry this history of dog evolution with that of humans is a tall order. “It’s like you have an ancient text in two different languages, and you’re looking to see how ...
