Dog evolution and archaeology - long (sorry)

Hiya

I thought the evolution debate should move to its own thread instead of hijacking the pack theory thread any longer! I should say, I'm no expert in this field - I used to be an osteologist, with some knowledge of archaeozoology and evolution. Now I'm a forensic anthropologist, consulting to the police on murder enquiries.

To answer Stans post:

I moved from osteology as there's simply no money in it. Archaeology is the lowest paid profession in the UK - graduates average around £10K a year. Much as I loved it, I didn't love it enough to live on the breadline for the rest of my life. I'd already done some medicine during my undergrad degree, so I did a couple more degrees in forensic medicine and anthropology.

The thing to remember about archaeology is, despite what they portray on the TV, the whole subject is conjecture. Certain programmes may say they can look at a series of small walls and determine this room was the kitchen, that room was the dining room, etc, but that's simply not true and not how it works. Mostly it's educated guesswork, faith, and bending the 'facts' to fit whatever theory you've dreamt up. So, the grave with the canid puppy: it may have been a pet, a sacrifice, a puppy found dead and placed in the grave as an offering etc. A dwelling with a tooth is even more problematic. There could be countless reasons why it was there - a canine living with the human inhabitants, an animal slaughtered before a hunt for good luck, a piece of jewellery, a tool of some sort, something unintentionally brought into the dwelling without the humans realising (eg the palaeolithic equivalent of walking dog poo into the house), and any other number of reasons I've not thought of here.

It depends where in the world these bits of evidence were found - people began settling in areas at different times in different parts of the world. It's generally believed people started settling in the Middle and Near East and the trend spread. If you're talking about the UK and this side of Europe, 12,000 years ago we were still very much on the move. This would've been the palaeolithic still, with a hunter-gatherer lifestyle and no permanent structures. We didn't really start settling properly until the neolithic (c. 4500 BC). As I said earlier, archaeology is conjecture and based very much on what's found and what someone wants to believe. Just because evidence hasn't yet been found doesn't mean it never will, or that it never existed.

I'm not sure if anyone will ever know exactly when the dog was domesticated. When I was an archaeologist, it was generally believed that the first domestication was of the dog, and that this took place in the mesolithic (c. 8000 BC).

In 2002 a team from Stockholm did an extensive study into dog evolution and concluded that dogs were first domesticated in East Asia approz 15,000 years ago - again looking at DNA. Harvard University also looked at cognition in dogs (using food under a bucket) and were surprised to find that, compared to wolves and our closest relative, the chimp, even young puppies were better at interpreting social cues from humans. They reckon that during the domestication event, there was some sort of change in a dog's cognitive ability that allowed them to figure out what other individuals wanted using social cues - 9 week old puppies were better at understanding where food was from a human's signals than an adult chimp! I'm dredging all this up from my frazzled memory, so I'll try and find some proper references if anyone's interested.

On a slightly different note, I've unearthed a picture of the dog burial I excavated on South Uist a few years ago - the dog was sacrificed in situ across a doorway:




Becs

Very interesting reading Becs.

Very interesting and informative thank you Becs it also agrees my own views... we know a little, have much to learn, today's much quoted theory may well be superseded by another as new information is found, and we may never know the full story

Extremely interesting - thank you Becs

Hi Becs

Excellent very honest and well written. And I totally agree with your statements that it can only be conjecture.

I suppose if you believe, as I do, that the dog is a product of natural selection and that common anatomical features are adapted to scavenging on our waste, then the dog cannot be older than the Mesolithic villages. and probably didn't really come into its own until the neolithic period.

Given the earliest permanant settlements that we have found to date, are in the fertile areas of the middle east. Then this may be (as pure conjecture) where dogs first appeared.

I think it is significant that some of the French caves where paintings have been found that there are no dogs or domestic animals. They have dated the paintings in the Chauvet caves as 31,000 years ago, but that would depend on how accurate the dating procedure is.

Thanks again for your views

Have you done any work in France or the middle east when on digs?

Stan

"the dog is a product of natural selection"

can i disagress and add that surely the dog is a product of UN-natural selection. (our interference)

Hi Jess

Perhaps you could tell us how you think the dog came about, Do you think we created it by taming Wolves?. I would be very interested in your opinion and where you get you information that we created the dog. and it wasn't natural selection by filling a evolutionary and available niche.

I would agree that current breeds fill your criteria, but that was not what we were discussing it was the origin of the dog thatwas in debate.

Stan

Hello all,
I have been following the last thread and this one, very interesting, some excellent replies and some opinionated but still valuable ones.

When a thread gets as complex as this one it is always wise to have your research to hand, it should be at least published, even if it is a student whose argument is lacking in depth, the article would still have been researched and this is the only way to argue effectively.

I would also be interested on your views on the origin of dogs, it is a subject with much opinion the Coppinger’s being only one, though I find their argument to have merit. It offers a logical if somewhat fanciful theory of the origin of the species.

Clearly, modern dog has more Wolf than any other wild canid in their DNA, this is undisputed. From a DNA profile it is not possible to determine the breed of one dog over another, therefore the suggestion that modern breeds are no more than 150 years old also has merit.

Of course dogs have been bred for centuries, however many would have bred not from stock dogs but from those that offered the opportunity for improvement, this includes those of other breeds. Once bred into them these “improvements” can be introduced into the breed by breeding only from those dogs that have the determined traits. Then we have changed a dog to suit our standard.

This doesn’t mean they will survive as a breed, natural causes such as disease famine or other disasters can wipe these out and the whole process will need to start again to produce a similar dog.

The Golden Lab is not much more than a century old, they were bred deliberately. Yet they are one of the most popular dogs around, ask the average person how old the breed is and they will likely say many hundreds if not thousands of years.

Hi Dervel

Welcome to the forum.

Have you read the thread on Pack Theory?.

Stan

Yes I did, it was very enjoyable as a thread and had some good solid argument in there. It didn't start until you joined, prior to that it was very chatty with little being said.

I found that the people who have some knowledge on this subject were easy to see, then there were those who entered with the, “I think" type off statement without any reference to why.

One example.


No it doesn’t mean she had to agree, but why didn't she agree, who has given her reason to disagree, or what has she read that causes her to disagree?

That is like saying the Holocaust didn’t happen, it was all made up, despite the evidence otherwise. Or that you disagree with Einstein’s theory of relativity, because its just a theory.

Theories are not plucked out of thin air Coppinger has worked for over 30 years as an ethologist.

Some ethologists have a problem with Coppinger, and some Physicists disagree with Einstein, they have enough and alternative information to do so.

Not that I am knocking healthy debate, its just, that saying well I don’t like that theory because I dissagree with it, doesn’t change the evidence. How about, I don’t like that theory because it doesn’t answer……or is at odds with ……. or Villa suggests otherwise....
In other words just because you don’t like something, it is not enough reason to try to demolish an argument, blinkers need removing.


Non the less one of the best threads I have read, I would like to see some more.

Dervel