Blog-Wa, the Dog-Wa Blog

There’s a fascinating new study about the origins of our family dogs.

Generally, scientists and researchers agree that the family dog we all know and love is descended from Eurasian grey wolves, domesticated between 15,000 and 40,000 years ago.  The date is controversial, since some believe that dogs may have been domesticated as much as 100,000 years ago.

The point of this research and study is not to figure out how long ago, but where dogs were first domesticated.

To establish that, researchers look to the DNA of dogs.  Their theory is that the genetic diversity correlates strongly with long history of dog domestication.  So the more diversity they find in canine DNA, the more likely it is that dogs were domesticated in that locality.

Previously, researchers have reported finding the most genetic diversity in dogs from East Asia.  And so they thought that this was the likely place where dogs were first domesticated.  But wait, not so fast!  It turns out that a big reason for finding more genetic diversity for dogs in East Asia was because that is where they have done the most testing.  Now that researchers have started more extensive testing on dogs in other places, they are finding equal genetic diversity of African dogs.  And they are embarking on testing of dogs from Portugal all the way to New Guinea.

We think this raises a couple of points:  first, it’s possible that dogs were independently domesticated in several unique places over time.  Second, it’s not exactly clear why greater genetic diversity would correlate with domestication.  And finally, it goes to show you that it’s a good idea to gather evidence before you theorize about what your evidence shows!