Dogs were the first domesticated species, but pinning down when they diverged from grey wolves has been notoriously difficult: early dogs and wolves are skeletally almost indistinguishable, and behavioural differences leave no archaeological trace. A study published in Nature, involving Oxford's School of Archaeology among 17 institutions internationally, now provides the earliest direct genetic evidence, recovering whole genomes from Late Upper Palaeolithic specimens roughly 16,000 to 14,000 years old.
The genomes came from sites including Pinarbasi in Türkiye, dating to around 15,800 years ago, and Gough's Cave in the United Kingdom, around 14,300 years ago, alongside Mesolithic sites in Serbia. Compared against more than 1,000 modern and ancient dog and wolf genomes, the analyses confirmed the bones belonged to dogs and that the animals were already widespread across western Eurasia by at least 14,300 years ago, pushing the previous genetic record of roughly 10,900 years back by some five millennia.
The findings show that dogs and wolves were clearly separate, biologically and in their relationships with people, at least 16,000 years ago, when all humans were still hunter-gatherers. Domestication therefore most likely took place during the last Ice Age, more than ten thousand years before any domestic plant or other animal, reshaping the timeline of one of the most consequential partnerships in human history.