One possible origin of early wolf domestication is a single cave in Germany.

 

A collection of ancient canine fossils discovered in a single cave in southwestern Germany revealed incredible genetic diversity, spanning nearly the entire history of dog domestication, from wild wolf to modern hound.

The age of these amazing specimens, which include dogs, wolves, and foxes, is older than nearly 60 other ancient canines that lived in Europe between 14,000 and 3,000 years ago, according to researchers.

Furthermore, a reconstruction of their mitochondrial genomes appears to fit the collective variation of almost all ancient canines studied so far from this area.

Gnirshöhle is a small cave in the Hegau Jura region, which is home to numerous caverns that were inhabited by humans between 17,000 and 12,000 years ago. It's regarded as a Magdalenian hotspot, after the ancient western European cultures that inhabited the region at the time.

Researchers have uncovered a possible stage for animal domestication by studying the anatomy, genetics, and isotopes of some of these Gnirshöhle bones - one of the most extensive sets of canine genomes in both time and space.

Intriguingly, a recent report based on the analysis of nuclear genomes of various ancient dogs indicated a single origin for modern dogs, but the team writes in their current study that it failed to provide a geographic location for such an occurrence.

While we can't answer the question of the singularity of the domestication case, our findings support the idea that the Hegau Jura was a possible center of early European wolf domestication.

Dogs are widely regarded as the world's oldest domesticated animals, but the exact details of how, when, and why this occurred are unclear. According to recent genetic research, dogs were domesticated at the same time in Europe and Asia, then mixed later. Later genomic studies contradict this, pointing to a common European origin.

The new research cannot put an end to the controversy, but the genetic diversity discovered in southwestern Germany suggests that the early humans who lived there tamed and reared wolves of different lineages.

The authors were able to determine a date for their last common ancestor by comparing the dog and wolf haplotypes, which was about 135,000 years ago in the late Pleistocene.

The authors point out that this date does not indicate when wolf and dog populations separated, nor does it indicate the start of domestication.

However, it establishes a ceiling for such occurrences.

The oldest undisputed dog fossil dates from about 14,000 years ago, with other, more contentious remains dating back as far as 30,000 years.

It's extremely difficult and subjective to tell the difference between the first domesticated dogs and their wolf counterparts, particularly because the change happened in stages. However, it is generally agreed that the first dogs appeared in Europe and Siberia about 16,000 years ago.

The new evidence, at least in Europe, backs up these dates.

According to bio geologist Chris Baumann of Germany, wolves were domesticated and kept as dogs between 16,000 and 14,000 years ago, based on their near proximity to humans and signs of a relatively restricted diet.

Thus, southwestern Germany may be one of the European domestic dog's origins.

That doesn't rule out the possibility of dogs being domesticated separately from grey wolves in other places.

In reality, the Gnirshöhle canids' genomes have revealed a previously unknown lineage that is unrelated to other dogs in the region. As a result, it's likely that this lineage represents expanding dog populations from around the world, perhaps even Asia.

For the time being, that's all speculation. The Gnirshöhle remains' genetics and teeth were insufficient to decide if these canids were dogs, wolves, or anything in between.

However, their diets tended to be low in protein, implying that these animals had adapted to more limited diets than they would get in the wild, likely due to human influence.

As a result, the study authors believe the Gnirshöhle canids reflect an early stage in wolf domestication, aided by humans actively providing a food supply for those early domesticates.

Furthermore, the high mitochondrial genome diversity may be clarified by Magdalenian people randomly selecting individuals from a wide pool of canid genetic variation in the area 15,000 years ago.