Anthropological analysis finds that dogs have been accorded human-like burial rites for thousands of years. The careful interment of dogs predates even the rise of agriculture, poignantly reinforcing the strength of the bond between our species. This dismissal, however, ignores thousands of years of similar practices. To cynics, this may seem like puerile anthropomorphism - romanticizing a relationship with an animal. Grave DogsĪt the end of Wilson Rawls’ 1961 classic Where the Red Fern Grows, the adolescent narrator buries his two canine companions with a solemnity all too familiar to those of us who have endured a similar loss. “Neither their morphology nor their genetics are smoking guns when it comes to domestication,” she says. Perri cautions that it can be nearly impossible to tell if early canine remains were dogs or wolves. The New Guinea highland wild dog is thought to have left mainland Asia in the company of humans and then returned to the wild before trekking across a land bridge to Australia and there evolving into the dingo. Others persisted in an intermediate state, as in the case of the New Guinea highland wild dog and its likely descendant, the dingo. In a vivid illustration of that fact, it was recently determined that black wolves carry a small amount of dog DNA. Semi-domesticated animals frequently returned to the wild and interbred with wolves. Whatever the reasons for the initial attraction, dog domestication was not a singular event, but rather constituted a multitude of events, spaced across geography and time. It may have been women who consolidated this millennia-long friendship. An ethnographic study co-authored by Quinlan found that, contrary to the stereotyped image of a man and his dog forging their way through the wilderness, women’s perceptions of dogs were positively correlated to both their utility in a given society and their status as persons. The relationship may have been reinforced by the innate human attraction to pedomorphic, or infantile, features like wide eyes and shortened faces, seen in wolf puppies and exaggerated in domestic dogs, even in adulthood. The off-spring of these more-tolerant wolves were likely then selected for other useful skills, such as hunting. Domestic dogs are in fact more vigilant than wolves. “Wolves on their way to becoming dogs were a great alarm system,” Quinlan says. Wolves more likely became acclimated to humans while scavenging the remains of their kills - they essentially kicked off the domestication process themselves. “This symbiotic or commensal relationship,” says Robert Quinlan, professor of anthropology at Washington State University, “probably initially happened accidentally.” More likely, domestication happened slowly, in fits and starts. “I don't know that many hunter gatherers would have had the time or patience to deal with a wolf pup and I don't know why they would want to,” says archaeologist Angela Perri of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. They don’t take to training well and are in constant contest with their trainers for dominance. Regardless of how much attention, training and affection are lavished on captive-raised wolf puppies, they remain wolves. Like most just-so stories, this appealing etiology has disintegrated under scrutiny.įor one, modern studies of wild wolf pups raised in captivity demonstrate that this would have almost certainly been impractical - the hardscrabble lifestyle of early humans was tough enough. Raised by humans and selectively bred over generations for docility and tractability, these lupine changelings morphed into something close to the canines we know today. Until relatively recently, the tale of how dogs and humans came to be so intimately acquainted took the form of a parable: Early hunter-gatherers adopted wild wolf pups, abducting them from their dens or perhaps fostering them after killing their parents. Insights from disciplines as diverse as psychology and archaeology, genetics and biology have filled out the pencil sketch of our shared history brushstroke by brushstroke, resulting in a portrait both surprising and familiar. In recent decades, we have brought the full force of the scientific method to bear on the origins of our beloved companions. Though in many ways we take their presence for granted, the story of this unprecedented interspecies alliance is complex. And more importantly, to those of us who have had dogs in our lives, they are our dearest friends. Dogs are our sentinels and shepherds, hunting partners and cancer detectors. The pairing makes for a striking case in coevolution - no other species has been so thoroughly integrated into human society. Early signs of domestication date back to 33,000 years ago and unambiguously domesticated dogs are common in the archaeological record beginning 15,000 years ago. The connection between human and dog runs deep.
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