Dogs tamed in Asia or Europe, old theory says … Why not both?

The domestication of dogs by humans was so inevitable, it might have happened more than once, according to a new study.

In a paper published this week in the journal Science, a team of international researchers concludes that dogs were domesticated twice, by two different groups of people living thousands of miles apart.

The findings could put to rest a long-standing scientific disagreement between those who believe the animals were first domesticated in Europe and those who argue they were first domesticated in Asia.

“Maybe the reason there hasn’t yet been a consensus about where dogs were domesticated is because everyone has been a little bit right,” Greger Larson, of the University of Oxford and the senior author on the paper, said in a statement.

Thanks to a vast web of collaborators, the research team had access to DNA sequences from the remains of 59 ancient dogs that lived between 14,000 and 3,000 years ago, as well as the complete genome of a medium-sized dog that lived 4,800 years ago from a grave complex in Newgrange, Ireland.

The team compared the prehistoric dogs’ DNA to genetic signatures of more than 2,500 previously studied modern dogs from around the world. Their analysis revealed a deep split between dogs from East Asia and those from Europe. But they also found that the two groups had a common ancestor sometime between 14,000 and 6,500 years ago.

The genetic study also found that this common ancestor probably originated in Asia.

But there is archaeological evidence that domesticated dogs were already hanging out with humans in Europe well before the split.

“There were dogs in Europe before the common ancestor of all dogs in Europe and all dogs in the world,” said lead author Laurent Frantz of the University of Oxford.

Turning to the archaeological record, the team reports that there is concrete evidence of dogs in Eastern Eurasia that dates back to 12,500 years ago. In Western Europe, there is evidence of dogs dating back to 15,000 years ago. But in the middle of Eurasia, dogs don’t show up until about 8,000 years ago.

Based on the evidence presented in the paper, which was published Wednesday, the team proposes a new narrative for the origin of dogs.

They say that ancient people in Asia and in Western Europe came to the same conclusion more than 10,000 years ago: that wolves could be, and should be, domesticated. But sometime between 6,400 and 14,000 years ago, dogs indigenous to Western Europe were partially replaced by an eastern dog population that had come westward alongside their humans.