All dogs may have origins in Chinese wolves

[pawnee]

SCIENCE
All dogs may have origins in Chinese wolves
Nicholas Wade, New York Times

Sunday, September 13, 2009


The dog has so many fine qualities it is hard to know which one it was prized and bred for by the early people who first domesticated its noble ancestor, the wolf. Was it the dog's valor in the hunt, perhaps, or its role as night watchman, or its strength in pulling a sled, or its companionable warmth on cold nights?


A new study of dogs worldwide, the largest of its kind, suggests a different answer, one that any dog-owner is bound to find repulsive: Wolves may have first been domesticated for their meat. That is the proposal of a team of geneticists led by Peter Savolainen of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.

Sampling the mitochondrial DNA of dogs worldwide, the team found that in every region of the world all dogs seem to belong to one lineage. That indicates a single domestication event. If wolves had been domesticated in many places, there would be more than one lineage, each leading back to a local population of wolves.

The single domestication event seems to have occurred in southern China, where the dogs have greater genetic diversity than those elsewhere. The region of highest diversity is usually the place of origin because a species tends to lose diversity as it spreads.

Savolainen sampled a part of the dog genome, the mitochondrial DNA, and was able to estimate the time of the domestication - probably around the period that hunter-gatherers first settled down in fixed communities in China, about 11,000 to 14,000 years ago. Those people would have had an organized culture that enabled them to make muzzles, and possibly cages, that would have been needed to handle wolves.

There is a long tradition of eating dogs in southern China, where dog bones with cut marks on them have been found at archaeological sites.

Savolainen said wolves probably domesticated themselves when they began scavenging around the garbage dumps at the first human settlements, a theory advocated by Ray Coppinger, a dog biologist at Hampshire College in Massachusetts. As the wolves became tamer, they would have been captured and bred. Given local traditions, Savolainen suggests, the wolves may have been bred for the table.

Thus, dogs may have insinuated themselves into human life by means of garbage and dog meat, but they quickly assumed less demeaning roles. Once domesticated, they rapidly spread west from the eastern end of the Eurasian continent.

Most people do not eat dogs, so they must have spread so quickly for other reasons, perhaps because of their use as guard dogs or in pulling sleds, Savolainen said.

His report was written with Jun-Feng Pang of the Kunming Institute of Zoology in China, who analyzed the DNA of the many Chinese dogs in the study. It was published last week in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution.

In 2002, Savolainen wrote that dogs had been domesticated from wolves in East Asia, a conclusion that was challenged last month by a team at Cornell University. The Cornell team said genetic diversity was as high in African village dogs as in those in China.

Savolainen disputed the Cornell calculation in his new report, contending that diversity was, in fact, higher in Chinese dogs.

Adam Boyko, a member of the Cornell team, said that Savolainen's team had now built a plausible hypothesis from detailed genetic data but that other explanations might still be possible, including that dogs had been domesticated at a second site, outside China, and had spread everywhere but China.

Stephen O'Brien, an expert on the genetics of domestication at the National Cancer Institute, said Dr. Savolainen's argument for a single domestication event in southern China was "a pretty good conclusion" but one that could be strengthened by a more thorough sampling of wolves throughout the world.


This article appeared on page A - 14 of the San Francisco Chronicle



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... z0RfhBX2Qi

[Purity]

That's interesting, pawnee! I never imagined all dogs came from China, of all places. Thanks for the info. =)

[Songdog]

That definitely changes the story. You hear the stories of early nomadic humans taming wolves by feeding scraps to those that were brave enough to come to their campfire. But now, instead of being fed, they're being eaten. What a fun story.

[pawnee]

yep. Most books I've come across state something along the lines that people didn't really get all 'lets be friends' with wolves until later...most likely people found wolf pups in dens and took them back to be eaten. Probably someone wanted to keep one instead of eating it.

Inuit and native americans did eat dog too, as well as using dogs to pull sleds and whatnot. I would say most species began being domesticated because they looked tasty.

[Blightwolf]

Many dog breeds originate from China anyway... and most of the breeds are ancient Chinese breeds.

This might be slightly irrelevant, but does anyone know how old is the Kunming Wolf-Dog (as a breed)?

[Rain_Swift-River]

Interesting information pawnee. Thanks for sharing ^_^

[Songdog]

Many dog breeds originate from China anyway... and most of the breeds are ancient Chinese breeds.

This might be slightly irrelevant, but does anyone know how old is the Kunming Wolf-Dog (as a breed)?

I don't think most breeds are "ancient Chinese breeds", I think the majority of dogs breeds were established in Europe.

The Kunming Wolf-Dog was 'started' in 1950, but was only recognized as an actual breed in 1988. It's a very, very new breed, so I don't generally lump in it with the other dogs. Just like the Labradoodle and such.

The breed was created in the early 1950s to meet the need for military dogs in Yunnan. A group of 10 dogs was brought to Kunming from a military K9 training program Beijing in 1953. (Available sources do not state what breed or breeds they were.) These ten dogs were insufficient for the immediate need, and so 50 suitable household dogs from Kunming were 'recruited' as well as 40 similar dogs from the city of Guiyang in Guizhou province. After training, the best twenty of these 90 'civil' dogs were then selected. The 10 'wolfdogs' from Beijing, these 20 'civil dogs' plus an additional 10 'shepherd dogs' imported from Germany constituted the pool from which the Kunming Dog was developed. The Chinese Public Security Bureau officially recognized the Kunming Dog as a breed in 1988. Kunming Dogs are used by the Chinese military and police, and have also found their way into use as civilian watchdogs and guard dogs.

I'm not sure how 'Chinese' in Origin it is. It may have been developed in China, but it doesn't state that the original dogs were Chinese themselves. That would be like taking two German breeds of dog, mixing them in Alaska, and then calling them an Alaskan breed.

[Blightwolf]

I meant that usually the most ancient and oldest breeds were developed in China or have Chinese/Asian origin.

Thank you for clearing that up for me.

[pawnee]

I'm not sure Embry. unrecgonized breeds are more diffifcult to research because their not acknolwedged by some kennel clubs.

I would say hunting breeds are the oldest though...most hunting dogs have ancient pedigres. Sight hounds were used by egyptians to hunt gazelle and such, while hounds were used by medieval people to hunt for game. Romans used danes and mastifs for hunting and guarding.

[Sunawa]

China?Of all places.You would never think a stubby little dog like a pug would have ancestors like wolves.