The question of when wolves became dogs just got a major update. Ancient remains unearthed at the Pınarbaşı archaeological site on Turkey's Central Anatolian Plateau have been genetically confirmed as belonging to a dog that lived 15,800 years ago — pushing back the earliest direct evidence of domesticated dogs by about 5,000 years.
Previously, the oldest genetically verified dog remains dated to roughly 10,900 years ago. Older dog-like bones, some as ancient as 33,000 years, existed but belonged to animals that weren't quite dogs yet — so-called incipient dogs still on the evolutionary path from wolf to companion. The new study, led by Lachie Scarsbrook at the University of Oxford, changes the picture dramatically.
"By at least 15,800 years ago, dogs were already dogs, and they already look genetically and morphologically like modern dogs," Scarsbrook told New Scientist. His team also confirmed that remains from Gough's Cave in Somerset, England, belonged to a dog dating back approximately 14,300 years.
What surprised the researchers was how genetically similar the two dogs were, despite being associated with human populations thousands of kilometers apart with almost no evidence of gene flow between them. The Gough's Cave dog was linked to the Magdalenian culture in western Europe, while the Pınarbaşı dog was connected to Anatolian hunter-gatherers. Genome analysis revealed that both animals belonged to a population that expanded across the continent between 18,500 and 14,000 years ago.
The team proposes that a third group — the Epigravettian culture — carried the dogs as they spread northward from the Italian peninsula into western Europe and then southeast into Turkey. These migrations would have brought them into contact with both the Magdalenian and Anatolian groups, facilitating exchange. Dogs, Scarsbrook noted, would have given hunter-gatherers "a new way of hunting and keeping your cave safe, and a living blanket to keep you warm on cold nights."
The findings illuminate a pivotal moment in human prehistory: long before the invention of agriculture, our ancestors had already forged the partnership with dogs that would endure for millennia. The story of domestication, it turns out, is older and more geographically sweeping than anyone had confirmed until now.
