They’re man’s best friends, but dogs did not always roam the Earth. Now new evidence shows that our canine companions may have originated in Asia.
The new study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, comes from a large international sampling of dogs, according to the New York Times. An international group of scientists, including researchers from Cornell University, Oxford University and others, used DNA evidence to trace the origin of dogs from gray wolves.
The study looked at more than 4,500 dogs from 161 different breeds and 549 “street” dogs from 38 countries, analyzing three types of DNA to see which dogs were closest to ancestral species. The study is the first to assess the types of DN from both purebred dogs and mutts.
The types of DNA the scientists looked at included DNA from all chromosomes, DNA from just the Y chromosome, which is found only in males, and DNA from mitochondria, which is inherited only from the mother.
Based on their analysis, the scientists believe that almost all dog breeds today originated in Mongolia, Nepal and other Central Asian regions. However, they also caution that it is possible that some breeds were domesticated elsewhere but ultimately died out.
It is also possible that some dogs domesticated elsewhere and then were brought to Central Asia, where they continued to diversify.
The researchers believe that the Asian dogs were first domesticated at least 15,000 years ago.