Origin of the dog

I have previously written a little bit about the origin of the dog in THIS post. There I write about bones of dogs that are 33 000 years old and found in Siberia and Belgium. I've since read a lot more about the origin of the dog and of different species of dogs. The picture below shows the genetic relationship between different species of dogs and wolves.

Picture borrowed from http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/dogs-likely-originated-in-the-155101.aspx

Apparently most breeds of dogs (except for a few ancient Asian dog breeds) are most closely related to the middle eastern population of wolves. The reason, the researchers think, for the ancient Asian breeds to be different is that they have at a later point been mixed with Asian wolves. What baffled the researchers is that the different types of dog, i.e. herding dogs, retriever dogs etc., were also genetically close within the groups. It was previously thought that breeds that had similar traits might just be the result of selective breeding towards the same goals at different geographical locations, but this seems not to be the case. This means that rather than taking what dog you have and turning it, through selective breeding, into the type of dog you want, dogs have been bred within its own groups to increase certain characteristics. One exception however, is the many miniature variants of breeds. These have often been accomplished by mixing the standard variety with miniature breeds. So that group is very genetically diverse.

So why am I making another dog origin blogpost? Well in part simply to be able to say, "I told you so". If all breeds that exist today seems to originate from the same population of wolves in the middle east, then the theory that the dog was domesticated many times (in order for them to have been at two separate geographical locations 33 000 years ago) is simply not true. The scientists behind that study thought that the reason why we don't see that kind of genetic variety that multiple domestication processes would show in the dog breeds of today, is that these dogs were extinct. I still don't think that is the case, I still think that the dog was domesticated at least 40 000 years ago, probably even earlier. They have yet to prove me wrong.


Sources:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/05/0520_040520_dogbreeds.html

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/dogs-likely-originated-in-the-155101.aspx

http://uanews.org/node/44227