Genomic history of early dogs in Europe
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Anders Bergstrom Anja Furtwängler Sarah Johnston Erika Rosengren Abagail Breidenstein Thomas Booth Jesse McCabe Jessica Peto Mia Adrianna Williams Monica Kelly Frankie Tait Chris Baumann Rita Radzeviciute Christopher Barrington Kyriaki Anastasiadou Alexandre Gilardet Isabelle Glocke Mattias Sherman Anastasia Brativnyk Alexander Herbig Kay Prüfer Saskia Pfrengle Joscha Gretzinger Tatiana R Feuerborn Ella Reiter Anna Linderholm Sophy Charlton Fernando Racimo Lea Mikkola Hugo Anderson-Whymark Douglas Baird Anne Birgitte Gotfredsen Hervé Bocherens Anne Bridault Rainer Brocke Dorothée G Drucker Andrew S Fairbairn Laurent Frantz Boris Gasparyan Liane Giemsch Mietje Germonpré Luc Janssens Andrew W Kandel Kurt Kjær Martina Lázničková-Galetová Daniel Loponte Ola Magnell Louise Martin Susanne C Münzel Gökhan Mustafaoğlu Bjørnar Måge Angela Perri Franziska Pfenninger Martina Roblíčková Annelise Roman-Binois Özlem Sarıtaş Katharina Schäppi J Alison Sheridan Karl-Göran Sjögren Jan Storå Lasse Vilien Sørensen Yvonne Tafelmaier Florian Ter-Nedden Olaf Thalmann Greger Larson Verena J Schuenemann Johannes Krause Pontus Skoglund
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Abstract
The earliest morphologically identifiable dogs are from Europe and date to at least 14,000 years ago1-5, although early remains are also found in other regions. The origin of early dogs in Europe, and their relationships to other dogs, has remained elusive in the absence of genome-wide data. Similarly, although dogs were the only domestic animal to predate agriculture, little is known about how the arrival of Neolithic farmers from Southwest Asia affected the dogs living with European Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. Here we analysed 216 canid remains, including 181 from Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Europe. We developed a genome-wide capture approach that enriched endogenous DNA by 10-100-fold and could distinguish dog from wolf ancestry for 141 of 216 remains. The oldest dog data that we recovered are from a 14,200-year-old dog from the Kesslerloch site in Switzerland, and we find that it shares ancestry with later worldwide dogs-inconsistent with the hypothesis that European Upper Palaeolithic dogs derived wholly from a separate domestication process. The Kesslerloch dog already displays more affinity to Mesolithic, Neolithic and present-day European dogs than to Asian dogs, demonstrating that dog genetic diversification had started well before 14,200 years ago. We find a Neolithic influx of Southwest Asian ancestry into Europe, but this seems to have been of smaller magnitude than in humans, suggesting that Mesolithic dogs contributed substantially to Neolithic, and, ultimately, probably also modern, European dogs.
Journal details
Journal
Nature
Volume
651
Issue number
8107
Pages
986-994
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10.1038/s41586-026-10112-7
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Europe PubMed Central
41882126
Pubmed
41882126
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