ARCHAEOLOGISTS FIND 14,000 YEAR OLD PET DOG BONES

Archaeologists found in a Swiss cave, a jaw fragment belonging to an ancient dog. After radiocarbon-dating it they concluded that it is over 14,000 years old and that it might be the earliest dog ever known.

Establishing when the first fully-domesticated wolf became a dog is a rather sensitive subject among researchers, and some already say that fossils much older than the Swiss have already been discovered.

Scientists have different theories about how and when dogs originated, as one analysis of modern dogs and wolves concluded that the first domesticated wolf (the first dog) lived in Asia, another in Eastern Europe and a third in the Middle East.

Well, archeology graduate student Hannes Napierala and archaeologist-zoologist Hans-Peter Uerpmann, study coauthors at the University of Tübingen in Germany say that the upper-jaw discovered in 1873 in Kesslerloch Cave, near Switzerland’s northern border with Germany, proves that domestic dogs lived there between 14,100 and 14,600 years ago.

Napierala states: “The Kesslerloch find clearly supports the idea that the dog was an established domestic animal at that time in central Europe.”

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... In a recent article in the magazine Discovering Archaeology, biologist Wolfgang Schleidt notes the apparent temporal coincidence between the emergence of humankind and of dogkind, and suggests that, "This intertwining process of hominization and caninisation suggests co-evolution." (6) Schleidt proposes a specific scenario, involving humans emulating wolves and eventually co-opting wolves in hunting the migratory reindeer of Ice Age Eurasia. Yet a much broader view of the interactions between humans and wolves, and the results of these interactions, might be envisaged.

... In the course of these generations wolves were transformed into dogs, but did their dogs also transform ancient people into humans? Would archaic humans have developed into such a successful and dominant species if we had not had the opportunity to learn from, imitate and absorb into our cultures the traits and abilities of the wolves with whom we lived?