Dogs are not only man’s best friends, but also the oldest. New evidence for this comes from two studies that analyzed the earliest known genomes of domesticated dogs in Europe. The first fossil individual, which is undoubtedly a dog instead of a wolf, lived in Turkey 15,800 years ago. Additional fossils show that our ancestors brought their dogs with them when they migrated from Southwest Asia to Europe. The results underline how closely the history of dogs and humans are linked.
Dogs were the first animals to be domesticated by humans. Even before the advent of agriculture, hunter-gatherer groups were accompanied by wolves, which gradually adapted more and more to humans and eventually became so genetically different from their wild relatives that they became a new species, the dogs. However, it is difficult to determine exactly when the transition from wolf to dog took place because their skeletons are morphologically very similar. The oldest direct genetic evidence for domesticated dogs dates back 10,900 years.
Oldest dogs genetically identified
Now two studies provide significantly older evidence. A team led by Anders Bergström from the University of East Anglia in Norwich analyzed DNA from 216 skeletal remains of canids from Germany, France, Belgium, Sweden, Scotland and other sites across Europe, including 181 samples more than 10,000 years old. The oldest animal that Bergström and his colleagues clearly classified as a dog based on genetic data lived 14,200 years ago and was found in the Kesslerloch Cave in Switzerland.
A second research team led by William Marsh from the Natural History Museum in London identified even older specimens: a 15,800-year-old dog from Pınarbaşı in Turkey and a 14,300-year-old individual from Gough’s Cave in England. Together with evidence from other archaeological sites, these finds show that domesticated dogs were already widespread in western Eurasia at least 14,300 years ago and that the main genetic lineages of modern dogs were already established by the end of the Paleolithic period. “This raises the possibility that domestication occurred during the last ice age – more than 10,000 years before the appearance of other domesticated plants or animals,” says co-author Lachie Scarsbrook from the Ludwig Maximillian University of Munich.
Companions of our ancestors
The analyzes also provide information about the dogs’ ancestry. According to Bergström and his colleagues, all domesticated dogs examined in Europe carried genetic material from Asian ancestors. European wolves, on the other hand, do not seem to have made any demonstrable contribution to the emergence of dogs. Nevertheless, the dog from Kesslerloch was genetically more similar to European dogs than to Asian ones. “Since the 14,200-year-old dog from Kesslerloch was already more similar to later dogs in Europe than to those in Asia, dogs must have been domesticated long before this point in time, so there was time for these genetic differences to develop,” explains Bergström.
When the first Neolithic farmers from Asia Minor and the Mediterranean region immigrated to Europe during the Neolithic Revolution and brought agriculture with them, their dogs apparently also came with them. The DNA analyzes show that the changes in human genetics associated with migration are also reflected in the genome of dogs – although to a much lesser extent. This suggests that the four-legged friends crossed with dogs of local hunter-gatherers who already lived in Europe. Comparisons with today’s European dogs show that this legacy lives on to this day.
“Dogs were the only domesticated animal that predated agriculture, so their evolution can help us understand how a major shift in lifestyle has shaped our own history,” says co-author Pontus Skoglund from the Francis Crick Institute in London. “It is fascinating that dogs that lived before the era of agriculture contributed significantly to the genetics of European dogs from the Neolithic period to the present day. Dogs were obviously important to our ancestors, as early farmers appear to have incorporated the dogs of earlier hunter-gatherers into their groups when they moved to Europe.”
Sources:
Anders Bergström (University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK) et al., Nature, doi: 10.1038/s41586-026-10112-7; W illiam Marsh (Natural History Museum, London, UK) et al., Nature, doi: 10.1038/s41586-026-10170-x