The domestication of wild dogs was a long and complicated process

Research results published in the journal Scientific advances examines 76 fossils of prehistoric canines to better understand the long, complex, and gradual process that transformed dogs from wild animals capable of great violence into adorable puppies that you can dress up as Santa Claus for Christmas today.

François Lanoë, an archaeologist at the University of Arizona, questions the assumption that there was a clear moment in history when a particular species of wolf split off and became what we now call a common dog. He argues that it is much more complex. Lanoë believes this happened gradually and at different paces in different places around the world, depending on a variety of factors. This is much more complicated than claiming that hungry dogs got used to us and became our best friends because we offered them leftover campfire food, allowing us to turn once-powerful creatures into, say, Vienna sausages.

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François and his team examined millennia-old dog bones found in Alaska, as well as the bones of modern dogs and their many variants. The study’s results suggest that the definition of human-dog relationships was broad, ranging from hunting partners to opportunistic scavengers. Some ancient breeds of dogs followed us to clean up after us when we moved away from a place.

The researchers found an interesting clue to the human-dog relationship in the diet of old dogs. Some of the bones showed that the dogs were eating salmon, which is strange since wild wolves don’t normally eat salmon. If they didn’t hunt it themselves, they must have gotten it from us, probably by hanging around human settlements to either steal our food, devour our leftovers, or take salmon right out of our hands. The results suggest that there was no clear break between wolves and dogs, but rather that there was a gradual mixing of wild and domestic traits over time.