Evidence of dogs accompanying humans in Europe during the Neolithic

A team of researchers from Europe and Israel discovered traces of dogs traveling with people from the Near East to Europe during the Neolithic. In their article published in the newspaper Letters of biology, the group describes their genetic study of dogs living in ancient Europe and the Near East and what they discovered.

Previous research has shown that dogs lived in the Near East and in Europe before Neolithic times. In fact, they were the only domesticated species already present in Europe when the peoples of the Near East arrived. Now, the researchers of this new initiative have found traces of dogs traveling with people when they moved from the Middle East to Europe and subsequently mated with the dogs that were already living there.

To learn more about the history of dog domestication, researchers investigated 100 mitochondrial sequences obtained from ancient dog remains found in the Near East and Europe. They used the genetic information found to trace the higher Paleolithic dog line to the Bronze Age.

Previous research has also shown that agriculture began in the Middle East in an area known as the Fertile Crescent. Some people from this era have ceased to be hunter-gatherers and have started domesticating animals and growing their own food. Some 9,000 years ago, some of these Middle Eastern farmers began migrating to Europe and Asia, bringing with them samples of crops they wanted to grow, such as wheat and wheat. barley, as well as a host of domestic animals, such as sheep and goats. and the dogs.

The researchers were able to trace the course of dogs migrating to southeastern Europe with their human companions. Once there, the evidence showed that dogs began to mingle with local dog populations. They suggest that such evidence shows that dogs were an integral part of the farmer-dog partnership in the early stages of agricultural development, probably as livestock assistants. The researchers also found that the European line of dogs was highly diluted even before the dogs of the Middle East made their way to Western and Northern Europe.

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More information:
Morgane Ollivier et al. Dogs accompanied humans during the Neolithic expansion in Europe, Letters of biology (2018). DOI: 10.1098 / rsbl.2018.0286

Abstract

Neolithic farmers in the Near East introduced several species of plants and domestic animals during their dispersal in Europe. Dogs were the only domestic species present in Europe and the Near East before the Neolithic. Here, we tested whether dogs in the early Near East possessed a unique mitochondrial lineage that differentiated them from Mesolithic European populations. We then analyzed the mitochondrial DNA sequences of 99 ancient European and Middle Eastern dogs, ranging from the Late Paleolithic to the Bronze Age, to determine whether the new farmers had brought dogs from the Near East. East with them or if they had adopted native European dogs after their arrival. Our results show that pre-neolithic European dogs all had mitochondrial haplogroup C and that neolithic and post-neolithic dogs associated with farmers in southeastern Europe possessed mainly haplogroup D. Thus, the appearance of haplogroup D most likely resulted from the spread of Middle Eastern dogs to Europe. In Western and Northern Europe, the turnover is incomplete and haplogroup C persists at least in the Chalcolithic. These findings suggest that dogs were an integral part of the Neolithic breeding program and that a mitochondrial lineage associated with the Near East was introduced in Europe alongside pigs, cows, sheep and goats. It's diluted in the native dog population when it reached the western and northern margins of Europe.