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The domestication of the dog would have started 23,000 years ago and would be the work of Siberian hunters during the last ice age. This is the theory developed by a team of researchers, whose study has just been published.
Greger Larson , a specialist in evolutionary biology at the University of Oxford , Angela Perri , archaeozoologist at Durham University and anthropologist David Meltzer of the Southern Methodist University (Dallas, Texas) are among the authors of a short story. study on the origins of the dog and its domestication . Its findings were recently published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , as Science reports.
They analyzed DNA data from ancient populations of dogs and humans to construct a scenario that the first domesticated canids were domesticated 23,000 years ago in Northeast Siberia. They would have thus accompanied the local hunters during the last ice age .
The evolution of the dog and that of the human closely related
The descendants of these dogs would then have spread in Europe, in Asia, but also in the Americas, in the company of the ancestors of the Amerindians . The origins of the dog in America were also the subject of this research.
Scientists have thus established a correspondence between the time and location of these separations and those of ancient Amerindian groups . All of these peoples descend from a single group, the ancestral Amerindians , which is believed to have emerged in Siberia about 21,000 years ago. They would have brought their dogs when entering America 16,000 years ago .
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All dogs are said to be the descendants of canids domesticated 23,000 years ago in northeastern Siberia
Going further in their research, the study’s authors found that the ancestors of dogs with the A2b genetic signature (Ancient Americans) lived in Siberia 23,000 years ago . Descended from the gray wolf, they were bred by groups of Siberian hunters that appeared 8,000 years earlier. They had settled in a relatively temperate region. Further east and further west, the climate was much more hostile.
For Greger Larson and his colleagues, all dogs are descended from the domesticated Siberian canid during this period.
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