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The September/October issue Archaeology Magazine has an interesting article on the domestication of dogs in antiquity. The following is a brief excerpt from the article:

But this year a team led by biologist Robert Wayne of the University of California, Los Angeles, showed that domesticated dog DNA overlaps most closely with that of Near Eastern wolves. Wayne and his colleagues suggest that dogs were first domesticated somewhere in the Middle East, then bred with other gray wolves as they spread across the globe, casting doubt on the idea that dogs were domesticated during a single event in a discrete location. Savolainen maintains that Wayne overemphasizes the role of the Near Eastern gray wolf, and that a more thorough sampling of wolves from China would support his team’s theory of a single domestication event.

Read the article in its entirety by visiting Archaeology Magazine online.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

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Tags: Archaeology, Dogs