Remember the post in which I analyzed the study that said dogs were 31,700 years old?
My biggest criticism of the study is that we have already seen extensive studies of dog molecular evolution that suggests that dogs come from East Asian wolves 15,000 years ago. I wanted to know how this study could square with that data.
Well, it turns out that it could square quite well, if we accept this study of mitochondrial DNA at Mathilda’s Anthropology. Essentially, the Europeans did have dogs at this time, but these animals were replaced with Asian dogs, at least in their matriline.
Why this happened is a good question. Perhaps Asian dogs were more fecund, or they had traits that made them of greater utility to domestic dogs. It is very hard to figure out.
This study adds further evidence we currently have only a fraction of the genetic diversity that once existed in the dog and wolf populations throughout the world.
This study also suggests that we definitely domesticated dog more than once. It’s just that one population of dogs wound up being superior to the others for some reason.
We also need to keep in mind that Asian wolves are also much more genetically diverse than any other populations of wolf. In fact, this diversity is so strong that some subspecies have been proposed to be separate species. I am, of course, talking about the Indian wolf and Himalayan wolf.
I am not entirely convinced that they are separate species. Instead, I think their divergent genetics should be analyze in light of the studies that rather firmly suggest that wolves were originally a very diverse species.
I read your reply on Matilda’s Anthropology. Sigh, you expressed the same frustration I have, not only about dogs, but other aspects of the sciences involved in reconstructing the past. No Interdisciplinary collaboration! A textile is found in a burial mound with horse and canid skulls. If there is someone knowledgeable about the botany of the time period, we get know what plants existed for the humans and horses to eat, but nothing about the horses themselves, and say whether or not their skulls relate to past wild horses or landraces or even breeds. If no textile expert is to hand capable of distinguishing goat hair from sheep’s wool, or can tell the difference between twining, plaiting and weaving, we get gobbledygook about the techniques the people were doing. If no canid expert is at the dig or readily to hand, then the skeletons are not examined, and everything is stuck in a plastic bin somewhere.
“Remember the post in which I analyzed the study that said dogs were 31,700 years old?
My biggest criticism of the study is that we have already seen extensive studies of dog molecular evolution that suggests that dogs come from East Asian wolves 15,000 years ago. I wanted to know how this study could square with that data.”
The difference between thw two figures is how much you consider to be a change that remains within the same species. Essentially, wolves and dogs are different varieties within the same species. By more advanced taxonomies, the majority of dogs are listed as a variety of red wolf, canis rufus familiarus. The key clue that animals are of a different species rather than one is when they can no longer interbreed.
I think the anthropology blog I cited answered this question fairly well.
The wolves of the Old World were much more genetically diverse 30,000 years ago, and at some point, these wolves became an ancient type of European dog. These dogs were then replaced by Asian dogs that were domesticated at another time, which for some reason, were hardier, more fecund, or had some special trait that led to Europeans choosing them over their native European dogs.
This happens in domestic animals a lot. 500 years ago if you wanted a dog to retrieve game you killed with an arrow, you would get a dog very similar to a poodle. There are dozens of poodle type water dogs throughout Europe. These dogs have either become standard breeds that are no longer used for that purpose or relict populations that have become rare or novelty breeds. These dogs have all been replaced, first by water spaniels and then by retrievers, which are much more efficient swimmers than the poodle-type water dogs.
If we consider that wolves were much more diverse in terms of genetics thousands of years ago, I think you can find that your suggestion is very much supported by the data.
Ultimately, it depends on whether you’re a lumper or a splitter. There may be one species of wolf, which includes dogs and dingoes, or there may be as many as 4 or 5.
When she writes, “One passage, that I’ve lifted straight from John Hawks, read..” she goes off the path of science into conjecture. John Hawks is on the fringe because he still supports the idea of race. That ideology does not match the data nor is accepted in either genetics, biology, or anthropology.
There is a great deal of inbreeding intellectually online. Hawks, I believe, posts online because his work is rejected by most editors of peer-reviewed journals.
This is the study she cites; now as for the other stuff she puts on there, I don’t know anything about it. I’m not an anthropologist or an archaeologist:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WH8-4TRK0V4-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=3d333c25c482ce44255b652ad88be4cb
I had no idea she was such a racist. I was just looking for some articles on the Goyet dogs and how that could square with what we already know.
Within this genus canis, there is an unusually high amount of gene flow among various species, we have coyote mtDNA sequences in most red wolves and most wolves of Eastern Canada.
I am certainly not claiming SHE is a racist. I do believe the works of Hawks are suspect.
Being of different haplotypes, or even haplogroups does not assign you to a different species. If it did, there would be at least 26 species of human. So, the peer-reviewed article you cite may not mean what you suppose it to. I do note that they refer to domesticated dogs as canis familiaris, which does not recognize the ability of these two varieties to become inbred.
You actually have hybrids of red wolves (canus lupus) and coyotes (canus lupus) in the Eastern US and Canada. They are not red wolves with coyote mtDNA.
Not all domestic dogs are the same and some are more related to the red wolf than other breeds. There are some Siberian breeds and the Mexican Chuhuahua that are significantly different.
I actually got into this because I wanted to take pictures of coyotes and knowing how they are different was of interest in tracking them. Coyotes have an oval print like a greyhound rather than a round like most domestive dogs or a wolf.
Actually, it’s one that’s called the gray wolf that the dogs are related to.
Why are coyotes a separate species? Not all wolf-coyote and dog coyote hybrids are fertile, so we do know there has been some speciation. http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:9mQikSsNeAsJ:www.ct.gov/dep/cwp/view.asp%3Fa%3D2723%26q%3D325992%26depNav_GID%3D1655+coyote-dogs+are+infertile&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=us&client=firefox-a
The red wolf (Canis rufus) is an interesting animal. It is either a wolf with a coyote mtDNA sequence, the result of either recent or ancient hybridization, or an ancient North American proto-wolf. There are true “red wolves” that are heavily interbred with coyotes. However, that does not make them the same species. We do know that coyotes are much older species than wolves. http://www.carnivoreconservation.org/portal/p_detail.php?recordid=11533
And wolves normally kill coyotes rather than interbred with them. If wolves have some other wolf to mate with, they will not go and join the coyotes. However, male wolves that cannot breed in a wolf pack may occasionally try to mate with a coyote. When the populations get low, the male wolves do mate with coyotes, and this is why we have wolf-like coyotes in the East and in the Red Wolf and Eastern Canadian wolf, coyote-like wolves. There is significant gene flow among species within these two subspecies/species of wolf.
http://www.canids.org/PUBLICAT/CNDNEWS3/2conserv.htm
All dogs, though, are descended from a Eurasian wolf, and probably an East Asian wolf:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/298/5598/1610
I actually believe there is only one species that encompasses all the wolves, dogs, and dingoes, based on all the evidence. However, coyotes and golden jackals are separate species, because of fertility issues, and we know that they split off this soup millions of years before this happened.
That oval eye thing is interesting, but there is so much variance in dogs through artificial selection that we’ve got dogs with triangular eyes (bull terriers) and bug eyes (pugs and chihuahuas).
Charles Darwin and Konrad Lorenz though there was a lot of Jackal in domestic dogs.
There is not. There is a Russian sniffer dog that is derived from the golden jackal, but as far as we can tell, there is no jackal or coyote in domestic dogs, or at the very most, not very much.
Check your sources. It is the red wolf they claim domesticated dogs are related to – hence the canus rufus in the Latin.
I am ver confident about the differences regarding coyotes on the one side and wolves/dogs on the other because of the chromosomal number difference. It is something like the horse/ass issue and explains mule (infertile) offspring.
It’s the gray wolf– Canis lupus.
The domestic dog is often referred to as Canis lupus familiaris.
Indeed, Peter Savolainin, a Swedish molecular geneticist, did a world-wide study of domestic dog mtDNA.
These results were compared with mtDNA from wolves all over the world.
He found that most domestic dogs come from an East Asian wolf-ancestor.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/dogs-that-changed-the-world/interview-molecular-biologist-peter-savolainen/1283/
Now, that’s not to say that all dogs through all history were descended from these wolves. Indeed, ancient European dogs were found to be much more genetically diverse than modern ones.
We do know that all dogs in existence today descend from some sort of Old World wolf population.
The red wolf is a New World species or subspecies. It is either the oldest wolf species and the ancestor of them all, including the coyote, a hybrid of wolf and proto-coyote from 100’s of thousands of years ago, or a more recent hybrid. Scientists have found evidence for all three theories.
But this New World wolf is probably isn’t the ancestor of domestic dogs.
You are correct. I was wrong. My only explaination is I was thinking of the hybrids back East of the wolves and coyotes on the one hand and the lupus/rufus rhymed somehow causing a short in my brain.
Have you seen this?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/science/04dog.html?ref=science
That’s very interesting. Every time they play around with dog and wolf DNA, something new pops up.
It’s interesting that they mention the Caucasus Mountains as a possible place of origin.
One of the oldest dog skeletons was found in the Dniepr Valley, but the dogs that were found were very similar to the Caucasian Ovtcharka:
https://retrieverman.wordpress.com/2008/12/15/could-the-oldest-dogs-be-molossers-or-of-molosser-type/
The Internet has too much information already :)
The Caucusas Mountains happen to be a likely origin of my J1e haplotype, Retrieverman.
Karter, there is far from enough information on the internet and the most important information is pier reviewed. Unfortunately, most of that requires that you pay for access.
I’d love to get my haplotype tested.
Have you read this book? http://www.amazon.com/Merles-Door-Lessons-Freethinking-Dog/dp/0151012709
He finds that his maternal ancestor lived in France (even though he’s Greek-American) and lived as a hunter-gatherer.
Most modern Europeans descend from Middle Eastern farmers, so he was more than a little excited about that. (He hunts elk in Wyoming as his main source of red meat.)
I wonder how they pinned it down to France/Gaul/Whatever.
There was a professor, at one of the prestigious universities in Britain (it slipped my mind on which one), who had collection of ancient MtDNA sequences. You can send a cheek swab to him, and he will figure out from which matriline you descend.
I just got around to this message. I have had a full genome sequence of my mtDNA. I am H3 without, as yet, a subclade. I doubt that he would do well with mine. The haplogroup is far too common and so few full genome sequances have been done to pin this down to a certain geolocation.
“or had some special trait that led to Europeans choosing them over their native European dogs.
This happens in domestic animals a lot.”
—- You know what, Scottie? I think a largely overlooked reason for some of that is the human penchant for novelty, and for “looking for greener grass on the other side of the fence”. You can see it happening today, this turnover in preferred breeds. A breed (or landrace) is useful for some purpose, is well-liked and appreciated, becomes popular – and then new people move in, who have something different. Maybe it’s bigger or badder; maybe it’s just – different. The old “tried-and-true” then comes to be seen as “common” and people clamor for the “new”. I think it must be human nature & probably has been for all those many thousands of years, maybe even since before humans were, well, human.
This is a very old post. So much stuff has come in since then that now we know dogs are older than that early date and East Asia isn’t their point of origin.
Sort of a status-symbol thing.