Dogs
Wolves and humans converge during the coldest part of the ice age, and one species domesticates another.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 7 thousand years
- Known to
- ± 4 thousand years
- Era
- Late Pleistocene, Quaternary
Genetic evidence points to dogs diverging from wolves in Siberia around 23,000 years ago, when human and wolf populations were confined together in the same glacial refugia; secure archaeological and genomic evidence for fully domestic dogs clusters nearer 16,000 years. The mechanism was probably self-selection — bolder, less fearful wolves scavenging around camps. It is the first domestication of any species, thousands of years before any plant or livestock animal, and dogs accompany the first people into the Americas.