Humans and dogs already lived together in America 12,000 years ago

Dec. 5 () –

An examination of archaeological remains from Alaska shows how indigenous peoples of the Americas interacted with the first dogs and wolves 12,000 years ago, two millennia before previous records.

“We now have evidence that canids and people had close relationships earlier than we knew they did in the Americas,” said the study’s lead author, François Lanoë, a research assistant professor in the School of Anthropology at the University of Arizona. The finding is published in Science Adavances.

“People like me who are interested in the settlement of the Americas are very interested in knowing if those first settlers arrived with dogs,” Lanoë added. in a statement. “Until such animals are found in archaeological sites, we can speculate about it, but it is difficult to prove one thing or another. So this is a significant contribution.”

Lanoë and his colleagues unearthed a tibia, or lower leg bone, from an adult canine in 2018 at an ancient archaeological site in Alaska called Swan Point, about 110 kilometers southeast of Fairbanks. Radiocarbon dating showed that the canine was alive about 12,000 years ago, near the end of the Ice Age.

Another excavation carried out by the researchers in June 2023 (an 8,100-year-old canine jaw at a nearby site called Hollembaek Hill, south of Delta Junction) It also shows signs of possible domestication.

Chemical analyzes of both bones found substantial contributions of salmon protein, meaning the canine had regularly eaten the fish. This was not typical for canines in the area during that time, as they hunted land animals almost exclusively. The most likely explanation for salmon appearing in the diet of a human-dependent animal.

“This is irrefutable proof, because they are not actually dedicated to hunting salmon in the wild.“said study co-author Ben Potter, an archaeologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Researchers are confident that the Swan Point canine will help establish the first known close relationships between humans and canines in the Americas. But it’s too early to say whether the discovery is the first domesticated dog in the Americas.

That’s why the study is valuable, Potter said. “raises the existential question: what is a dog?”

The Swan Point and Hollembaek Hill specimens may be too old to be genetically related to other known, more recent dog populations, Lanoë said.

“Behaviorally, they appear to be like dogs in that they ate salmon provided by people,” Lanoë said, “but genetically, they are not related to anything we know of.” He pointed out that they could have been domesticated wolves rather than fully domesticated dogs.