Swedish study traces origins of man's best friend

[Floater]

A team of Swedish and Chinese researchers has discovered that the first ever dogs emerged in an area south of the Yangtze River in China some 16,000 years ago.

Peter Savolainen, a biology researcher at Stockholm's Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), led the research group that has managed to specify the date and birthplace of the dog.

The study illustrates that dogs originated in Asia, south of the Yangtze River in China about 16,000 years ago, and descend from several hundred tamed wolves.

http://www.thelocal.se/21858/20090903/

[Jay Tea]

Interesting that an article about 'Man's best Friend' traces the beast back to the country that probably hold dogs in the least regard of all.

OK, maybe it's not that interesting...

[llewtrah]

A team of Swedish and Chinese researchers has discovered that the first ever dogs emerged in an area south of the Yangtze River in China some 16,000 years ago.

... and spread to the rest of the world after evolving the ability to use commuter transport

(cf Russia's commuter dogs)

[Horse Chestnut]

It's a pretty sketchy article, but I'm a little skeptical about a theory that dogs would have been first domesticated by a farming culture, rather than hunter-gatherers. It's been shown that domestication and selective breeding can happen fairly quickly, but to get a dog to go from being a hunting companion to a defender of livestock, which requires a suppression of the prey drive, would be a pretty big leap.

Here is an article suggesting that dogs may actually have been domesticated 17,700 years earlier, and even mentions the discovery of a dog's and a child's footprints walking together. These prints were made 26,000 years ago. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27240370/

Now that makes sense; dogs were first domesticated by kids bugging their parents to get them a puppy.