The time when wolves were tamed and became dogs has been found to be the Paleolithic era, long before the development of agriculture. The international journal Nature said on the 26th that two papers have been published revealing that domesticated dogs were already widely distributed across western Eurasia at least 14,200 years ago.
Until now, the oldest known dog genes dated to 10,900 years ago, but this time genes from 15,800 years ago were identified. Extending the genetic history of dogs by 5,000 years, the findings are expected to help clarify how dogs emerged and spread in Europe.
◇Modern European dogs are descendants of Paleolithic dogs
A research team led by Anders Bergström, a professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, reported in Nature that they analyzed the genes of 216 dog and wolf remains from the Paleolithic era transfer 10,000 years ago in Europe. The oldest dog remains were found at the Kesslerloch site in Switzerland and are estimated to date to 14,200 years ago.
After analyzing all the genes, the Kesslerloch dog was found to share the same ancestry as dogs from other parts of Europe. This shows that the genetic diversification of domesticated dogs began 14,200 years ago. Until now, it was thought that dogs originated separately from wolves in East and West Eurasia. The team showed that all early European dogs were of East Eurasian lineage. That means they share genetic lineages with Asian dogs.
Dogs were the only domesticated animals present in Europe before the advent of agriculture, but the exact time when they were tamed remains unclear. Archaeological evidence indicates that dogs split from wolves in the Paleolithic era 15,000 years ago. Some scientists argued, based on fossil size and shape, that dogs and wolves diverged earlier than 30,000 years ago.
But it was difficult to confirm the process from bones alone. Fossils that initially appeared to be dogs sometimes turned out to be wolves that are now extinct. By fully decoding the genes of dog remains this time, researchers found definitive evidence that domesticated dogs spread during the Paleolithic era.
Bergström's team also found that the impact of agriculture, which began in the Neolithic era, on the history of European dogs was smaller than expected. In humans, as agriculture spread from Southwest Asia to Europe, there was large-scale population influx. The migrants caused major changes in human genes. In dogs, such genetic impact was less pronounced than in humans. Rather, the team said that dogs kept in hunter-gatherer societies had a greater influence on today's European dog breeds.
◇A special relationship formed in hunter-gatherer societies
A research team led by Laurent Frantz, a professor at the Graduate School of Life Sciences at Ludwig Maximilian University of Germany, published a paper stating that analysis of genes from Paleolithic dog remains found at Pınarbaşı in Türkiye and Gough's Cave in the United Kingdom showed that domesticated dogs were already widely distributed across western Eurasia at least 14,300 years ago.
The Türkiye dog dates to about 15,800 years ago, and the United Kingdom dog to 14,300 years ago. The team analyzed the genes of Paleolithic dogs older than 10,000 years and compared them with those of about 1,000 modern and ancient dogs and wolves worldwide. Comparing maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA showed that, although the Türkiye and United Kingdom sites are more than 3,000 km apart, the dogs were genetically similar. Genetic analysis revealed that the two Paleolithic dogs were members of a population that expanded across the continent between about 18,500 and 14,000 years ago.
This study also produced evidence that the dogs had close relationships with hunter-gatherers at the time. An analysis of the bones' radiogenic isotopes by the University of York and the Natural History Museum in the United Kingdom indicated that hunter-gatherers in Türkiye likely fed fish to dogs. That means they provided food that dogs could not easily obtain in the wild. Along with evidence that dogs were buried, this shows that humans treated dogs as special beings, the team said.
Why did Paleolithic humans give dogs special treatment? It is unlikely that dogs moved such long distances on their own. Scientists infer that hunter-gatherers took dogs with them when they went to other regions. Frantz said, "The fact that people exchange dogs across Europe so early means the animal was important." He said, "Keeping dogs when resources were scarce suggests some purpose," and "one possibility is that dogs served as an efficient alarm system that alerted people to danger."
Mikkel Sinding of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and Lauren Hennelly of Rice University in the United States said in a commentary in Nature, "These papers again emphasize that domesticated dogs were already widely distributed across western Eurasia 14,000 years ago, from the United Kingdom through Central Europe and the Italian Peninsula to Anatolia (Türkiye)," adding, "Taken together, the two studies trace the origins of today's Western dogs back to the late Pleistocene (about 126,000 to 11,700 years ago), before the end of the last ice age."
References
Nature (2026), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10112-7
Nature (2026), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10170-x