Genomic history of early dogs in Europe
Abstract
Abstract The earliest morphologically identifiable dogs are from Europe and date to at least 14,000 years ago 1–5 , although early remains are also found in other regions. The origin of early dogs in Europe, and their relationships to other dogs, has remained elusive in the absence of genome-wide data. Similarly, although dogs were the only domestic animal to predate agriculture, little is known about how the arrival of Neolithic farmers from Southwest Asia affected the dogs living with European Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. Here we analysed 216 canid remains, including 181 from Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Europe. We developed a genome-wide capture approach that enriched endogenous DNA by 10–100-fold and could distinguish dog from wolf ancestry for 141 of 216 remains. The oldest dog data that we recovered are from a 14,200-year-old dog from the Kesslerloch site in Switzerland, and we find that it shares ancestry with later worldwide dogs—inconsistent with the hypothesis that European Upper Palaeolithic dogs derived wholly from a separate domestication process. The Kesslerloch dog already displays more affinity to Mesolithic, Neolithic and present-day European dogs than to Asian dogs, demonstrating that dog genetic diversification had started well before 14,200 years ago. We find a Neolithic influx of Southwest Asian ancestry into Europe, but this seems to have been of smaller magnitude than in humans, suggesting that Mesolithic dogs contributed substantially to Neolithic, and, ultimately, probably also modern, European dogs.
Article Details
Authors (68)
Anders Bergström
Anja Furtwängler
Sarah Johnston
Erika Rosengren
Abagail Breidenstein
Thomas Booth
Jesse B. McCabe
Jessica Peto
Mia Williams
Monica Kelly
Frankie Tait
Chris Baumann
Rita Radzeviciute
Christopher Barrington
Kyriaki Anastasiadou
Alexandre Gilardet
Isabelle Glocke
Mattias Sherman
Anastasia Brativnyk
Alexander Herbig
Kay Prüfer
Saskia Pfrengle
Joscha Gretzinger
Tatiana R. Feuerborn
Ella Reiter
Anna Linderholm
Sophy Charlton
Fernando Racimo
Lea Mikkola
Hugo Anderson-Whymark
Douglas Baird
Anne Birgitte Gotfredsen
Hervé Bocherens
Anne Bridault
Rainer Brocke
Dorothée G. Drucker
Andrew S. Fairbairn
Laurent Frantz
Boris Gasparyan
Liane Giemsch
Mietje Germonpré
Luc Janssens
Andrew W. Kandel
Kurt Kjær
Martina Lázničková-Galetová
Daniel Loponte
Ola Magnell
Louise Martin
Susanne C. Münzel
Gökhan Mustafaoğlu
Bjørnar Måge
Angela Perri
Franziska Pfenninger
Martina Roblíčková
Annelise Roman-Binois
Özlem Sarıtaş
Katharina Schäppi
J. Alison Sheridan
Karl-Göran Sjögren
Jan Storå
Lasse Vilien Sørensen
Yvonne Tafelmaier
Florian Ter-Nedden
Olaf Thalmann
Greger Larson
Verena J. Schuenemann
Johannes Krause
Pontus Skoglund