Did you know that 50,000 years ago there were no dogs in the world? Dogs may be our best friend, but they also are our best creation. And to some extent, they are the reason we are alive, while other species of human, like the Neanderthals, are dead…very dead.
The first time our ancestors met the ancestors of modern dogs, the wolves, they competed for food and habitat. The two predators could tear each other apart. Most wolves probably did not want to be cuddled by the hairless apes. The journey from competing for food to sharing homes is still a mystery, but a fascinating one.
The earliest fossil evidence of Palaeolithic canines comes from 36,000-year-old specimens. These canines’ morphology was between that of wolves and modern dogs. These were not cute little puppies, but large beasts weighing over 30 kgs. We know these dogs were tamed because their fossils were closely associated with human fossils. Furthermore, they were purposefully buried in cemeteries, sometimes with gifts for the afterlife. This would only be possible if these canines were emotionally attached to people.
According to one theory, the wolves domesticated themselves into dogs, but only the friendly ones. Ninety-five percent of modern dogs come from just three female Eurasian grey wolves who possibly lived in Central Asia. Wolves and humans were both persistent predators who were capable of killing each other. They were competing for the same prey. Then came the Ice Age, another geological twist to our fate.
The Ice Age forced the prey to burn off their fat and become lean. Leaves, nuts and fruits were hard to find in the harsh winters. This forced change that led to the domestication of dogs. Humans preferred fat and were not very good at digesting large quantities of lean meat. The hunters and gatherers had excess lean meat during Ice Age and they may have shared their leftovers with the friendly wolves that roamed around the human camps. Studies show that while the Paleolithic humans fed on the fatty mammoth meat, the domesticated Paleolithic dogs were given lean reindeer meat. We divided our proteins instead of competing.
In the beginning the wolves must be roaming around human settlements for easy leftover meats. Over time they developed a mutual admiration. Humans may have picked up some of the orphaned wolf puppies and kept them. They soon became the first pets of Homo sapiens and over time turned into dogs.
Why would human beings share their limited food resources with another species? Was this altruism? May be, or may be not. Studies show that our hunting efficiency increased once we domesticated the wolves. We became faster and deadlier.
Wolves are very social animals, and they live in groups. They are wired to be faithful to the group they belong to. The puppies that grew up in the human camp became faithful to the human tribes, as it was in their nature. The friendly dogs were preferentially bred and the more aggressive ones were either killed or thrown back to the wild. Over time they became more social, obedient and faithful than wild wolves. The domesticated wolved split rom their main lineage and evolved into dogs. They became protective of their master. The dogs became hunters, guards, status symbol, and even beasts of burden at times. But mostly, they were companions.
Some scientists think that it was because of dogs that we survived the Ice Age. They gave us an edge over other human species like Neanderthals. Neanderthals lost the competition for food and went extinct. Dogs gave their owners access to the scarce resource during Ice Age that the groups without dogs did not have. This probably created the first social inequality in humans, long before we learned farming.
There is evidence that our partnership with a different predator species transformed us. Dogs alerted us to scents and noises that we would have missed otherwise. They provided us with the speed and physical power that evolution did not provide. This new relationship was just as significant as the development of stone tools, use of fire, or invention of wheels. A simple idea that it was possible to domesticate other species, would revolutionise our lives.