The History of The Dog

Dogs and mankind go way back. Way, way, way back in fact, since the relationship started before we even had civilization. For tens of thousands of years, men and dogs have been living and working together, an arrangement that’s worked out really well for both of us.

Like many things with roots in antiquity, the exact origin of dogs is still in question. We know for sure that we’ve been using them for at least ten thousand years, because we’ve found the remains to prove it. We have somewhat less definitive evidence that dates back to fourteen thousand years, and the partnership might actually go back even further.

What we do know is that modern dogs are descended from the Gray Wolf. Mitochondrial testing indicates that this split occurred about 100,000 years ago, but we don’t know if that was the result of human intervention, or whether some natural trait occurred that would lead them to being man’s best friend.

Wolves are social animals. This doesn’t mean that they go out and party all the time, just that they are used to living and working with other animals, and they have clearly defined hierarchies. This is different than, say, cats, which are solitary and competitive animals for the most part, which doesn’t lead to easy domestication.

So wolves were an easy animal to interact with, which is probably a big reason why we started using them, or that they started using us. What mostly likely happened is that wolves started following groups of men around, because they were good hunters and there were leftovers available for easy scavenging.

Eventually, some of these wolves were brave enough to actually interact with man directly, and this proved to be a trait that could be bred for. What man found out was that the wolves were a great asset in hunting animals, and could be used to alert the human groups of danger, so it was a mutually beneficial arrangement.

As civilization grew, man began to breed these wolves with specific roles in mind, which lead to what we think of as the modern dog. The first group to be bred was almost certainly the various hounds, through a selection process that paired dogs that were good at tracking with other dogs that were good at tracking so that the trait grew stronger through the generations. Around the same time working dogs came about.

Dogs are fairly easy to breed, and they are a lot more flexible in terms of their genetics than many other animals. Cows, for instance, pretty much look the same regardless of their breeding, as do horses, cats and most of the other animals we interact with.

Dogs, on the other hand, can range from five pounds to more than two hundred pounds, in a variety of shapes, sizes and instincts. This flexibility and their long association with man is what has given us the diverse number of breeds we have today. It’s also created a unique bond between our species, one that is close to universal and will probably continue into the future.