Paleolithic Dogs

[greg64 2,560]

3 hours ago, Francie said:

So just for the craic chris, what do you expect dogs to evolve into?

Will they stay the same, four legs, sharp teeth etc or will they evolve into different "species" and why mate?

Another question, what did wolves evolve from?was it also a "prehistoric canine?lol

http://www.naturalworlds.org/wolf/history/wolf_history.htm          have a read francie  I know with the time scales involved you will dismiss it but it is interesting 

Edited February 12, 2018 by greg64

[keepitcovert 842]

I heard it was off Geoff Burrells line of dogs.

Edited February 12, 2018 by keepitcovert

[Tyla 3,179]

I found that interestinh

[sandymere 8,260]

Looking at the picture there appears to be a number of rings that would suggest multiple episodes of growth interruption This suggests needing support on a number of occasions.

 

 

 

For me the biggest question is "what came 1st domestication or the dog?"

[Tyla 3,179]

So where wolves domesticated and turned into dogs or were dogs wild originally and then domesticated? 

[sandymere 8,260]

A few thoughts I wrote a couple of years ago on this subject.

From wolf to worker.

 

Part one

 

Recently geneticists have suggested that dogs started to split from their wolf ancestors some 100.000 years ago which is around the same period that man is thought to have moved out of Africa. What influence this early divergence was directly linked to mans spread is arguable and at what point these early types became true dogs rather than altered wolfs is also uncertain. It is not even known if mans domestication of the wolf resulted in the dog or if the dog evolved as a separate type from the wolf which man then domesticated. Archeological evidence does point to coexistence going back over 30.000 years but it may well be older and perhaps there have been a number of periods of interaction that lasted as long as useful then waned as circumstances changed. This means some of the earliest archeological evidence may not be the direct ancestors of modern dogs as domestic animals but rather evidence of a shared environmental history. What we do know is that it was with the emergence of the pastoralist and farmers, around 14,000 years ago that dogs and humans seem to have developed the true bond that has earned this ancestor of the wolf the title “Mans best friend”.

The recent genetic evidence suggests that the dominant wolf ancestor of modern dogs was of Middle Eastern origin, with a later addition of Asiatic and or Chinese wolves, this mirrors the development of agriculture starting in the Middle East with a few satellite centre’s including China. It would then follow that the dog would spread with theses early pioneers as the new lifestyle replaced the hunter gatherers society that had prevailed up to that time. Perhaps those early hunter gatherers had their own dogs but if so they like the hunter gatherer societies they accompanied have in the main been usurped. Certainly today many modern hunter gather societies utilize dogs but they all share the same genetic background as the modern dog and are more likely to be modern additions supplied from the pastoralists rather than being from an earlier domestication episode. An example would be the San people of Southern Africa, they have been known to use dogs as hunting companions but these are normal African pie dogs which have the usual Middle Eastern ancestry and where most likely introductions from the north brought by invading tribes such as the Zulu rather than traditional hunting partners.  There are no mention or pictorial evidence of dogs in the Sans long and intricate oral histories or early cave paintings, which go back for thousands of years and continued up until quiet recent times, the last images made depict trains cutting through their shrinking homelands. It’s likely that true hunter gatherers didn’t need dogs; they were extremely competent without them so another mouth would be an unnecessary burden. San Bushmen living in the harsh environment of the Kalahari Desert were said to need to hunt only about two days a week with the woman going out gathering approximately 4 days a week so a dog was never needed, it would seem that dogs run with pastoralists and farming rather than the original hunter gatherers.

 

What the San peoples do have is an oral history of a relationship with particular lions, they would drive game to the lion to be captured and once fed the lion would be driven off and the remainder of the kill used as food for the group. These lions would learn to play their part in anticipating ambushing the prey and leaving once a meal had been eaten. This interspecies cooperation may have happened in other areas and could suggest the possibility of other species, such as wolfs, developing similar interdependent roles with humans. In the wolf human situation it may well have been the wolfs that were the scavengers attaching themselves to hunting groups to scavenge on waste but still hunting larger prey to which the humans would then have been party. These early interactions could have had an effect on altering the evolutionary pressures of particular groups of wolfs from a very early period, perhaps that first meeting in the middle east 100.000 years ago, and so begin the development of the dog without the need of direct domestication. These early camp followers may have joined the humans as they spread into their Middle Eastern territories from Africa and then may have traveled in the wake of the hunter gatherers as the populations expanded outwards to Europe and Asia undergoing the evolutionary process that would one day result in the dog. Adaptations to the camp follower lifestyle would have helped to keep these packs separate from local populations as they spread so isolating the gene pool and helping to fix a type ready for the domestication with the birth of the agriculturalists lifestyle around 14,000 years ago.  A skull found in Belgium dated from over 30.000 years ago could be a transitional stage of wolf to dog. Perhaps the dog has been in the shadow of man for a long time and once the situation was right its transition to domestication was a smaller step than has previously been thought. So our modern dogs, whether they are salukis, huskies or African village curs, have their roots set in the Middle East and the type is set to the extent that when left to natural selection, as with the Dingo, they don’t revert back to wolves but remain dogs. The next stage in this interspecies collaboration would been to start the process of breeding to improve positive traits such as guarding, herding or hunting and the emergence of the specialist but that’s a whole new story.

[ChrisJones 7,973]

I've always gone with domestication first, dog second. Natural selection made it more friendly, artificial selection then came along to select what we see. At what point that happened I have no idea but I'm sure Jeff Burrell is in its roots.

[mushroom 12,352]

Jeff invented the dog.... simples!