Humans domesticated dogs thousands of years earlier than initially thought, according to new research.
Analyses of canine bones in Alaska suggests man and dog were living together much earlier than previously thought – around 10,000 BC.
The bones contained traces of salmon proteins, indicating that canines were regularly eating fish that must have been caught by humans – a sign of domestication.
Researchers from the the University of Arizona found a 12,000-year-old lower leg bone that belonged to a wolf-sized, adult canine at an archaeological site called Swan Point, located about 70 miles southeast of Fairbanks.
Swan Point is one of several sites in the area that contain some of the oldest evidence of human habitation in the state.
This ancient dog had been alive near the end of the Ice Age, suggesting that Indigenous Alaskans formed relationships with dogs some 2,000 years earlier than previous studies had shown.
The researchers believe this recovered leg bone helps establish the earliest known close relationships between humans and canines in the Americas.
In addition, the team found an 8,100-year-old canine jawbone at the nearby Hollembaek Hill dig site south of Delta Junction, providing evidence of domesticated dogs’ continued presence in human settlements.
Researchers unearthed this 8,100-year-old canine jawbone (above) in interior Alaska in June 2023. The bone is among the earliest evidence that ancestors of today’s dogs formed close relationships with people in the Americas roughly 2,000 years earlier than previously thought
‘People like me who are interested in the peopling of the Americas are very interested in knowing if those first Americans came with dogs,’ said lead study author François Lanoë, assistant research professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona.
‘Until you find those animals in archaeological sites, we can speculate about it, but it’s hard to prove one way or another.’
But Lanoë and his colleagues’ study has finally uncovered that missing evidence.
‘We now have evidence that canids and people had close relationships earlier than we knew they did in the Americas,’ Lanoë said.
Chemical analysis revealed that the bones contained salmon proteins, indicating that the dogs had regularly eaten fish.
This was surprising because the canines of this area and time period only hunted land animals.
The most logical explanation, therefore, is that the dog was fed fish caught by humans, the researchers concluded.
‘This is the smoking gun because they’re not really going after salmon in the wild,’ said study co-author Ben Potter, an archaeologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Pictured above, the dig site known as ‘Hollembaek Hill,’ south of Delta Junction in Alaska where the ancient canine jawbone was unearthed. Archaeologists have long done research in partnership with local tribes in this Delta Junction area
The jawbone and this leg bone found at Swan Point, Alaska (seen above in a composite scan) both showed chemical evidence of salmon proteins in lab tests – a discovery that led the team to conclude ancient humans had likely fed the fish to the canines, who did not hunt fish in the wild
But both Lanoë and Potter noted that this evidence, while compelling indicators of when dogs were first domesticated, is still a long way off from a solid timeline.
‘It asks the existential question, what is a dog?’ as Potter put it.
These friendly, salmon-eating canines, Lanoë said, might still be closer to tamed wolves than a true early example of the kinds of uniquely bred and domesticated dogs modern day people might recognize.
Above, an image of François Lanoë, an assistant research professor in the University of Arizona School of Anthropology, after helping unearth the 8,100-year-old canine jawbone in June 2023
The researcher noted that this evidence – while compelling indicators of when dogs were first domesticated – is still a long way off from a solid official timeline. Above an illustration of an early American travelling with their canine companion
‘Behaviorally, they seem to be like dogs,’ according to Lanoë, ‘but genetically, they’re not related to anything we know.’
To excavate the Hollembaek Hill site, the research team worked closely with the Healy Lake Village Council, the leadership group for the Mendas Cha’ag people indigenous to the area.
One Healy Lake local who is now an archaeologist herself, Evelynn Combs, assisted in the study as part of her work for the tribe’s cultural preservation office.
Combs spent her childhood exploring the village and surrounding Tanana Valley with her own dog Rosebud, a Labrador retriever mix. She marveled at how the new finds give a greater historical context to traditions she lived in her own life.
‘I really like the idea that, in the record, however long ago, it is a repeatable cultural experience that I have this relationship and this level of love with my dog,’ Combs said.
‘I know that throughout history, these relationships have always been present,’ she continued. ‘I really love that we can look at the record and see that thousands of years ago, we still had our companions.’
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