Dogs were widely distributed across western Eurasia during the Palaeolithic
Abstract
Abstract Archaeological evidence suggests that dogs diverged from wolves during the Palaeolithic, more than 15,000 years ago 1–7 . The earliest unequivocal genetic evidence, however, is associated with dog remains from Mesolithic archaeological contexts approximately 10,900 years ago 8,9 . Here we generate both nuclear and mitochondrial genomes from canid remains at Pınarbaşı in Türkiye (15,800 years ago) 10 and Gough’s Cave in the UK (14,300 years ago) 11 , as well as from dogs excavated from two Mesolithic sites in Serbia (Padina between 11,500–7,900 years ago and Vlasac 8,900 years ago) 12,13 . Our analyses indicate that a genetically homogeneous dog population was already widely distributed across Europe and Anatolia during the Late Upper Palaeolithic (by at least 14,300 years ago). This finding suggests that dogs were exchanged among genetically and culturally distinct western Eurasian Late Palaeolithic human populations, namely the Magdalenian, Epigravettian and Anatolian hunter-gatherers 10,14–16 . Last, we identify a major influx of eastern Eurasian dog ancestry during the Mesolithic, concomitant with the movement of eastern hunter-gatherer populations into Europe 14 , which led to the establishment of the primary ancestry characteristics that define European dog populations today.
Article Details
Authors (46)
William A. Marsh
Lachie Scarsbrook
Eren Yüncü
Lizzie Hodgson
Audrey T. Lin
Maria De Iorio
Olaf Thalmann
Mark G. Thomas
Mahaut Goor
Anders Bergström
Angela Noseda
Sarieh Amiri
Fereidoun Biglari
Dušan Borić
Katia Bougiouri
Alberto Carmagnini
Maddalena Giannì
Tom Higham
Ophelie Lebrasseur
Anna Linderholm
Marcello A. Mannino
Caroline Middleton
Gökhan Mustafaoğlu
Angela Perri
Joris Peters
Mike Richards
Özlem Sarıtaş
Pontus Skoglund
Rhiannon E. Stevens
Chris Stringer
Kristina Tabbada
Helen M. Talbot
Laura G. Van der Sluis
Silvia M. Bello
Vesna Dimitrijevic
Louise Martin
Marjan Mashkour
Simon A. Parfitt
Sonja Vukovic
Selina Brace
Oliver E. Craig
Douglas Baird
Sophy Charlton
Greger Larson
Ian Barnes
Laurent A. F. Frantz