古DNA證實，人類在發展農業前就擁有狗隻（1/2）

Recently the New York Times reported the following:

(Source: The NYT)

Humans Had Dogs Before They Had Farming, Ancient DNA Confirms (1/2)

New research pushes the first genetic evidence of dogs back by 5,000 years and suggests that hunter-gatherer groups may have acquired dogs from one another.

The NTY By Emily Anthes - Emily Anthes is a science reporter, writing primarily about animal health and science. She also covered the coronavirus pandemic.

March 25, 2026, 12:00 p.m. ET

In the waning days of the last ice age, when humans were still hunting with spears and using cave walls as canvases, a hot new trend was spreading through the Paleolithic landscape.

By roughly 14,000 years ago, hunter-gatherer societies across Europe had discovered dogs, scientists reported in two new papers, which were published Wednesday in the journal Nature. The studies provide the first definitive genetic evidence that dogs existed during the Paleolithic period, before humans developed agriculture.

The researchers, who used several approaches to analyze DNA extracted from ancient canine specimens, identified Paleolithic dogs at five different archaeological sites in Europe and Western Asia. The oldest of these dogs lived about 15,800 years ago, pushing back the oldest known genetic evidence of dogs by nearly 5,000 years.

These early dogs came from sites that extend from Britain to Turkey, and were associated with several very different hunter-gatherer populations. But the dogs themselves were closely related. Across the five sites, the dogs were more genetically similar than the humans were, the researchers found.

“The people are so different, but the dogs are very much the same,” said Greger Larson, a paleogeneticist at the University of Oxford and one of the authors on both new studies, which were conducted by large, international scientific teams.

The finding suggests that these early human societies were exchanging dogs or acquiring them from one another.

“It is kind of the equivalent of a new blade or a new point or a new kind of material culture or art form or something, where everybody’s getting really excited about having this fun new thing around.” Dr. Larson said. “And it’s useful and it’s interesting and it’s probably cute.”

The research provides new insight into the early history of dogs, as well as the genetic legacy and the interspecies relationship that extends to today.

“It’s really a major step forward in advancing our knowledge of humans and dogs,” said Elaine Ostrander, a canine genomics expert at the National Human Genome Research Institute who was not involved in the research.

Dogs descended from ancient wolves, but exactly when and where they first emerged remains a subject of intense scientific debate. Some scientists have suggested that the size and shape of ancient canine specimens indicate that dogs and wolves diverged more than 30,000 years ago.

But such remains can be tricky to identify definitively. In some cases, geneticists have determined that canine remains that initially appeared to be from dogs actually belonged to now-extinct wolves. In others, they haven’t been able to recover enough DNA to make a conclusive call about species. Before the new research, the oldest definitive dog DNA dated back just 10,900 years.

In one of the new studies, scientists assembled and analyzed the complete genomes of eight ancient canines and compared them with ancient and modern wolves and dogs. Six of the animals had genomes that resembled those of dogs, they concluded. And two of those dogs dated back to the Paleolithic era — a 15,800-year-old dog from Pinarbasi, Turkey, and a 14,300-year-old dog from Gough’s Cave, an archaeological site in Britain.

The genomes from those two Paleolithic dogs became “the Rosetta Stone, for lack of a better term, that then unlocked all of the stuff that we already had in our database,” said Lachie Scarsbrook, a paleogeneticist at the University of Oxford and an author of one of the studies.

That database had three other ancient canines, their species unknown. The genetic data on these animals was incomplete: Scientists had previously sequenced only the DNA from their mitochondria, representing a small fraction of their total genetic material. (A vast majority of an animal’s DNA is stored in the cell nucleus.)

But the mitochondrial DNA from these three unknown canines was so similar to the mitochondrial DNA from the British and Turkish dogs that the scientists concluded that these animals were probably Paleolithic dogs, too. They were 14,000 to 14,300 years old and came from sites in Germany, Italy and Switzerland.

In the second paper, scientists used a different approach to extract and analyze DNA from more than 200 ancient canine remains, including samples from the same site in Switzerland. They analyzed nuclear DNA from the same canine that the first team had identified as being a Paleolithic dog and reached the same conclusion.

(to be continued)

Translation

古DNA證實，人類在發展農業前就擁有狗隻（1/2）

一項新研究將最早發現狗基因的證據推前5000年前，並顯示狩獵採集群體可能彼此之間傳播了狗。

在上一個冰河時期的末期，當人類還在用長矛狩獵，並在洞穴牆上作畫時，一種新的潮流正在舊石器時代蔓延開來。

科學家在周三發表於《自然》雜誌的兩篇新論文中報告說，大約在14,000年前，歐洲各地的狩獵採集社會已經發現了狗。這些研究首次提供了確鑿的基因證據，證明狗在舊石器時代就已經存在，早於人類發展農業。

研究人員運用多種方法分析了從古代犬類標本中提取的DNA，在歐洲和西亞的五個不同考古遺址中發現了舊石器時代的犬類。其中最古老的犬類生活在約15,800年前，將已知最早的犬類基因證據向前推前了近5,000年。

這些早期犬類來自從英國到土耳其的多個遺址，並與幾個截然不同的狩獵採集群體有關。但這些犬類本身卻有著密切的親緣關係。研究人員發現，在這五個遺址中，犬類的基因相似度甚至高於人類。

牛津大學古遺傳學家Greger Larson說:「人類如此不同，但犬類卻非常相似」。他是這兩項新研究的作者之一，這兩項研究均由大型國際科學研究團隊完成。

研究結果顯示，這些早期人類社會可能在交換狗隻，或是從彼此之間獲得狗隻。

Larson博士說: “這有點像是一種新的刀刃、新的尖端、新的物質文化或藝術形式之類的東西，大家都對這種有趣的新事物感到興奮不已” ， “它既實用又有趣，而且可能還很可愛。”

這項研究為我們了解狗隻的早期歷史、遺傳傳承以及延續至今的跨物種關係提供了新的視角。

並未參與這項研究的美國國家人類基因組研究所的犬類基因組學專家Elaine Ostrander說道:「這確實是增進我們對人類和狗的了解的一大進步」。

狗起源於古代狼，但它們究竟何時何地出現仍然是科學界激烈爭論的話題。一些科學家認為，古代犬類標本的大小和形狀表明，狗和狼在3萬多年前就已經分道揚鑣。

但要準確鑑定這些遺骸並非易事。在某些情況下，遺傳學家已經確定，最初看似屬於狗的犬科動物遺骸實際上屬於現已滅絕的狼。而在其他情況下，他們未能提取到足夠的DNA來對物種做出最終判斷。在這項新研究之前，已知最古老的犬類DNA可以追溯到10,900年前。

在其中一項新研究中，科學家收集並分析了八種古代犬科動物的完整基因組，並將其與古代和現代的狼和狗的基因組進行了比較。他們得出結論，其中六種動物的基因組與狗的基因組相似。而這六種狗中有兩種可以追溯到舊石器時代 - 一種是來自土耳其Pinarbasi的距今15,800年的狗，另一種是來自英國高夫洞穴（Gough's Cave）考古遺址的距今14,300年的狗。

牛津大學古遺傳學家、其中一項研究的作者Lachie Scarsbrook表示，這兩隻舊石器時代犬的基因組，在沒有更好的名稱之下 ，“ 就稱之為‘羅塞塔石碑’，它解開了我們數據庫中已有的所有謎團”。

該資料庫中還包含另外三隻古代犬科動物，它們的物種尚不明確。這些動物的基因數據並不完整：科學家先前僅對它們的粒線體DNA進行了定序，而粒線體DNA僅佔其全部遺傳物質的一小部分。 （動物的大部分DNA都儲存在細胞核中。）

但這三隻未知犬科動物的粒線體DNA與英國和土耳其犬的粒線體DNA高度相似，因此科學家們得出結論，這些動物很可能也是舊石器時代的犬類。它們的年代是在14,000至14,300年前，來自德國、義大利和瑞士的遺址。

在第二篇論文中，科學家採用了不同的方法，從200多份古代犬類遺骸中提取並分析了DNA，其中包括來自瑞士同一遺址的樣本。他們分析了與第一組研究人員鑑定為舊石器時代犬類的同一隻犬的核DNA，並得出了相同的結論。

（待續）

Note:

1. The Rosetta Stone (羅塞塔石碑) is a stele of granodiorite inscribed with three versions of a decree issued in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt, on behalf of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes. The top and middle texts are in Ancient Egyptian using hieroglyphic and Demotic scripts, respectively, while the bottom is in Ancient Greek. The decree has only minor differences across the three versions, making the Rosetta Stone key to deciphering the Egyptian scripts. (Wikipedia)