14 DAY TRIAL // Dogs may not come from the Middle East after all, two new studies indicate. The latest works in the field indicate that Fido was domesticated south of the Yangtze River, in China, about 16,000 years ago.
These results directly contradict evidence produced by other researchers, who proved that the Middle East has the highest concentration of evidence supporting dog domestication occurred at that location.
What is widely accepted among researchers is that dogs originally evolved from wolves. The new species learned to live together with humans, trading some of their ferociousness for a mutually advantageous relationship with their new human overlords.
What remains a heated point of debate is when humans and dogs started living together in the same settlements. Even with the evidences brought forward by the two new studies, experts are still in doubt that the issue has been answered entirely.
“I'm not convinced,” says Durham University evolutionary biologist Greger Larson. He explains that the fossil record is of no particular use in this regard, since wolf and dog fossils remained identical for thousands of years after the groups separated.
However, with the advent of modern technologies, researchers have turned to DNA samples as a main source of information. Since 2002, contradictory studies have been published on this issue, with the Middle East and East Asia emerging as the prime two candidates for the title.
The first study that demonstrated dog-human companionship originated in southern China came in 2002 from KTH Royal Institute of Technology geneticist Peter Savolainen. He and his team analyzed mitochondrial DNA data, covering a type of nucleic acid that is only transmitted by females.
In 2010, a new study demonstrated that the Middle East is the most likely place of origin for dogs. That research was based on analyzing single base differences in the dogs' nuclear DNA. But the authors of the 2002 study said that last year's work was no good because it did not include East Asian data.
In a new study, Savolainen and his group analyze the Y chromosome in the dog genome, which only males of the species can transmit on to future generations, ScienceNow reports. A total of 14,000 chromosome bases were sequenced throughout the entire study.
The work covered data collected from 151 dogs, 10 wolves, and two coyotes. The team found a total of 50 differences in the Y chromosome data, which enabled them to reconstruct dogs' history. The study again confirmed that southern China is the point of origin for our closest friends.
However, this study is unlikely to conclude the long-term debate that has been raging on in the scientific community. Undoubtedly, more studies remain to be conducted until the issue is resolved.