SoylentNews

takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/earliest-evidence-dog-breeding-found-remote-siberian-island [sciencemag.org]

The hunter-gatherers of Zhokhov Island were a hardy folk. Nine thousand years ago, they survived frigid year-round temperatures in animal-skin tents some 500 kilometers north of what is now the Russian mainland, and they were the only people ever known to hunt large numbers of polar bears without firearms. Now it appears these ancient Arctic dwellers did something even more remarkable: They may have been among the first humans to breed dogs for a particular purpose. An analysis of canine bones from Zhokhov suggests the dogs there were bred to pull sleds, making this the first evidence—by thousands of years—for dog breeding in the archaeological record.

Archaeological dogs from the Early Holocene Zhokhov site in the Eastern Siberian Arctic [sciencedirect.com]

Previously: Dogs may have been Domesticated More Than Once [soylentnews.org] (DOI: 10.1016/j.jasrep.2017.04.003) (DX [doi.org])

Original Submission