Editing Dog (section)

==Age==
Until a few years ago it was still thought that domestication of the dog began around 14,000 years ago (peat dog), probably in the Middle East or Asia. However, studies of the genetic information show that the domestic dog (original dog) separated from the wolf about 100,000 years ago .
The clarification of the origin of the dog from the wolf also raised the question of the age of our dogs: Based on various bone finds, the canine researchers were so far convinced that the taming and domestication of pack animals took place 12,000 to 15,000 years ago. But then a genetic study - published in the journal "Science" - threw these theses overboard. Through a genetic analysis of dogs and wolves, Swedish and American evolutionary biologists have come to the conclusion that the original dog does indeed descend from the wolf, but was born around 135,000 years ago. This would make man's best friend around ten times older than previously assumed.
Traditional canine researchers were - not entirely surprising - snubbed by the new study. "I think it is unlikely that the wolves were domesticated so early," said the Swiss cynologist and author Hans Räber. "You have to have archaeological finds, and we don't have them." And even in the oldest, around 14,000-year-old excavations, according to Räber, it is not always clear whether it is about wolves or dogs. Joakim Lundeberg of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, one of the authors of the genetic study, disagrees: "Early humans were nomadic hunters and gatherers," said the biochemist. Because there were no "cemeteries" at that time, it is not necessary to find dog fossils next to human fossils.