The first peoples to settle the Americas likely brought their own canine companions with them, according to new research that sheds more light on where dogs came from.
An international team of researchers led by archaeologist Angela Perri of Durham University in the UK examined the archaeological and genetic records of ancient people and dogs.
They discovered that the first peoples who crossed into the Americas more than 15,000 years ago, of Northeast Asian descent, were accompanied by their dogs.
The researchers say that this discovery suggests that the domestication of dogs probably took place in Siberia more than 23,000 years ago. People and their dogs ended up traveling west to the rest of Eurasia, and east to the Americas.
The results of the study were published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS).
The American continent was one of the last regions in the world to be colonized by man. Around the same time, dogs had been domesticated from their wolf ancestors and probably served a variety of roles in human societies.
According to Angela Perri the when and where have long been questions of dog domestication research, but here we have also explored the often overlooked how and why . The domestication of the dog in Siberia answers many of the questions we have always had about the origins of the relationship between man and dog.
Putting together the puzzle pieces of archaeology, genetics and time, we see a much clearer picture where dogs are domesticated in Siberia and then spread from there to America and around the world .
Geneticist and co-author Laurent Frantz (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich) said:The only thing we knew for sure is that dog domestication did not take place in the Americas . From the genetic signatures of ancient dogs, we now know that they must have been present somewhere in Siberia before people migrated to the Americas .
Co-author Professor Greger Larson, from the University of Oxford, said:Researchers have previously suggested that dogs were domesticated throughout Eurasia, from Europe to China, and many places in between . Combined evidence from ancient humans and dogs is helping refine our understanding of the deep history of dogs, now pointing to Siberia and Northeast Asia as a likely region where dog domestication began .
During the Last Glacial Maximum (23,000 to 19,000 years ago), Beringia (the land and sea area between Canada/Alaska and Russia), and most of Siberia, were extremely cold, dry, and largely unglaciated.
The harsh climatic conditions leading up to and during this period may have served to bring human and wolf populations closer together, given their attraction to the same prey.
This increased interaction, through mutual scavenging of prey by wolves approaching human camps, may have initiated a relationship between the species that ultimately led to the domestication of dogs, and a vital role in peopling the species. Americas.
As co-author and archaeologist David Meltzer of Southern Methodist University (Dallas, TX) points out, we've known for some time that early Americans must have had finely honed hunting skills, geological knowledge of finding stone, and other necessary materials and be prepared for new challenges . The dogs that accompanied them as they entered this entirely new world may have been as much a part of their cultural repertoire as the stone tools they carried .
Since their domestication from wolves, dogs have played a wide variety of roles in human societies, many of which are tied to the history of cultures around the world.
Future archaeological and genetic investigations will reveal how the emerging mutual relationship between people and dogs led to their successful dispersal throughout the world.