Dogs and humans became best friends in Europe more than 18,000 years ago. That’s the conclusion of a genetic study of dogs and wolves, both ancient and modern.
The time and place of dog domestication have been hotly debated, with genetic studies and archaeological finds often seeming to contradict each other. Fossils from Europe had suggested doglike creatures existed there for about 30,000 years. But some genetic studies placed the birth of domestic dogs in China or the Middle East (SN: 4/10/10, p. 12). Previous genetic studies have compared DNA from living dogs and wolves, but those efforts generally did not include ancient DNA.