The first Fido probably wagged its tail in the Middle East.
The largest-ever genetic family tree of dogs and wolves traces dogs’ domestic origin to the region, an international group of researchers reports online March 17 in Nature. The finding fits with archaeological evidence that dogs were domesticated in the Middle East or Eastern Europe and contradicts earlier genetic data suggesting that man’s best friend originated in China.
That earlier work found more genetic diversity in East Asian dog breeds, indicating that the breeds are older and probably represent the earliest domesticated dogs. Although the statistics used in the new analysis aren’t perfect, the study probably gets closer to the truth in unearthing dogs’ origins, some researchers say.
“Nothing ever seals the deal, but this is pretty strong evidence for dog domestication in the Near East cultural region,” says Carlos Driscoll, a geneticist at the National Cancer Institute at Frederick, Md., who was not involved in the new study. “Combined with the fact that all the earliest archaeological evidence points to the region, I think it will be a while before anything more solid comes up.”