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Tübingen (dpa / lsw) - The transition from wolves to tamed dogs could have developed 16,000 to 14,000 years ago in southwest Germany.
Experts from the Senckenberg Center at the University of Tübingen suspect this.
An international team of researchers examined the beginnings of domestication of wolves in Europe and published the data on Thursday in the Nature journal Scientific Reports.
For this purpose, several fossils from the family of dogs (Canidae) - which includes today's domestic dogs as well as wolves and foxes - from the Gnirshöhle near Engen in the Konstanz district were analyzed using various methods.
The Gnir Cave is a small cave with two chambers, which is located in the immediate vicinity of two other caves from the Magdalenian age, an archaeological cultural stage in the later section of the Upper Paleolithic at the end of the last Ice Age.
During the investigation it was found that the bones came from many different genetic lines and that the newly sequenced genomes covered the entire genetic spectrum from wolf to dog, explained Chris Baumann from the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment in Tübingen.
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The researchers believe that the people of Madgaléniens tamed and raised animals that came from different lineages of wolves.
“The closeness of animals to humans as well as the indications of their rather restricted diet lead us to assume that wolves were domesticated as domestic dogs 16,000 to 14,000 years ago.
One of the origins of European dogs could therefore be in southwest Germany, ”said Baumann.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210304-99-686457 / 2
Senckenberg Center
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Caves in the Hegau
Ice Age Park Engen
Article in Nature