For about 20 years, specimen PP-00128 in the geoscientific collection of the University of Alaska Museum is thought to belong to a rather old bear. The femur fragment, small enough to hold between two fingers, was excavated at a site along the southeastern Alaska coast, where archaeologists also discovered the remains of fish, birds, mammals and humans dating back thousands of years.
Recent genetic tests of the monster, however, came as a surprise to scientists – but perhaps not dog owners: PP-00128 once belonged to a loyal dog company that ran alongside humans in the icy new world of America about 10,150 years ago has.
The analysis of the oldest domestic dogs yet to be discovered in America is being carried out today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, not only provides important clues for the first time dogs entered the Americas, and the routes they took with humans to get here, but it also strengthens the very long and deep bond between humans and domestic dogs.
“Even if you can imagine nothing about human life 10,000 years ago, you can still understand the relationship between humans and their dogs,” says Carly Ameen, a zoo expert at the University of Exeter who was not involved in the new work. .
Footprints Track Across America
Although this is the oldest evidence for domestic dogs in America, the femur fragment does not necessarily belong to one of the first dogs to transmit it from Northeast Asia. In 2018, the cemeteries of several dogs in Illinois were found to be approximately 9,910 years old. With a difference of a few centuries, the title of “oldest” now hardly belongs to the Alaska puppy PP-00128. But archaeologists are more interested in the fact that we now have dogs of the same age in two different parts of North America. This means that dogs came to America much earlier – but when did they first arrive?
According to recently uncovered genetic evidence, people around the time when a third of North America was buried under the ice about 26,500 to 19,000 years ago during the last glacial peak (LGM), increasing encounters with gray wolves in Siberia, where relatively moderate shelters are provided. prey could both hunt and eat. These wolves gradually became domestic dogs between about 40,000 and 19,000 years ago. (Ancient wolves that played with humans probably evolved into today’s friendly dogs.)
As part of a multidisciplinary research project examining the stories of the region’s animals, climate and environment as the ice sheet penetrated and retreated, scientists uncovered the genetics of bones excavated in the region, including those at the University. of Alaska. museum. Charlotte Lindqvist, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Buffalo and co-author of the new study, was interested in what was stored at the time. One bone, sample PP-00128, originally excavated from the site of Lawyer’s Cave on the Blake Channel in Alaska, is thought to belong to one.
While genetic analysis proved that PP-00128 did not belong to a bear, extraction of the complete DNA profile of the dog was not possible from the small bone fragment. But its mitochondrial DNA – a small fraction of the entire genome inherited only from the mother line – has been detected. The multidisciplinary team’s analysis suggested that the dog belonged to a genus that was not divided with its Siberian canine cousins earlier than 16,700 years ago – about the time people in North America traveled along the coast.
But even this moment in time may not represent the point at which some Siberian dogs first followed humans in America. Unless there were initially very few dogs, the dog populations that remained in Siberia should not all have had the same mother as the dogs from the American population, says Krishna Veeramah, a population geneticist at Stony Brook University who is not involved in the new work. Dogs from both groups probably shared a common ancestor many generations earlier, long before they walked their own path.
In other words, the point of 16 700 years may represent the point at which their genetics are diverse, but is not necessarily the point at which the population is divided – so that timestamp can not be used to say when tame dogs the Americas first once entered.
Just like the entry of people into the Americas, the timelines for the initial dog pioneers remain vague. (There is still no evidence to say whether the very first human migration included dogs, for example, or that their four-legged friends came a little later.) But the discovery that this tame dog lived on the Alaska coast then the region’s coasters quickly withdrew tips on the routes people could take.
Scientists are eager to know whether humans first migrated in America through corridors of land between the melting Cordilleran and Laurentide ice sheets, or that they followed the Pacific coastline to southern points. “I’m sure migration took place both ways,” Lindqvist says, but geological evidence shows that ice along the coastal route retreated earlier, providing an early entry point into the New World.
A ‘Swiss Army Knife’ with Fur
Isotopic analysis of PP-00128 revealed that the Alaska dog had a diet with things like fish, whale and seal meat – probably pieces offered by his human companions. While it is unclear what this Alaska dog could have been like in life, experts can venture a guess with reasonable inferences.
Robert Losey, an archaeologist who focuses on human-animal relationships at the University of Alberta, who was not involved in the new work, claims it would have been a bit large, maybe 50 to 60 pounds, if it was similar to other early Siberian dogs. . “I would expect the dog to behave like our own dogs, that it would be well adapted to cold environments, and probably also participate in hunting, carrying loads and pulling loads on sleds,” he says. (Humans and dogs have been sledding for almost 10,000 years.)
“If you want to get yourself an old American dog, the best thing you can get yourself is a Siberian or Alaska husky, a malamute or a Greenland sled dog,” says Angela Perri, an archaeologist at Durham University of England, which is not part of the study.
She compares dogs to a kind of “Swiss Army knife” for the various purposes they have provided to humans throughout history – as hunters, guardians, alarm systems, bed warmers and sources of emotional support.
But, says Perri, ethnographic reports tell us that in the Arctic, “when you get desperate, when times get tough, dogs are used as fur and food sources.” For dogs entering the Americas, their purpose may shift back and forth over time, depending on how difficult conditions were at that moment during their old travels.
A ‘Ruff’ concept of history
After entering the Americas, these ancient Siberian dogs spread throughout North and South America, where they mingled with coyotes and wolves and eventually mingled with dogs that emigrated from elsewhere, including the Arctic breeds that migrated about 1,000 years ago. was brought along by the Thule People.
Ironically, the genetic ancestry of these old dogs was almost destroyed when European colonialists transferred their own dogs just a few centuries ago and killed the earlier arriving dogs by carnage and disease. But thanks to genetic work and serious discoveries, their story does not waste time. And as this latest discovery shows, “there’s a huge treasure trove of data sitting in our storerooms and warehouses,” says Ameen.
Given enough time, the vast wilderness of Alaska, through careful archaeological work, will also reveal its secrets about the first arrival of both humans and their canine companions.
“The answers to everything just sit and wait,” Perri says. “There’s no animal that has the relationship with people like dogs have, right?”
“The story of dogs is the story of humans,” she adds.