9000 year old dog

[George Looney]

9,400-year-old dog found, earliest found in Americas - CSMonitor.com

[eddies]

thats a good one

[Maedevil]

Dog remains provided the name to the Basketmakers in the Southwest in the "White Dog" phase. See Fiedel (2005) Man's Best Friend -- Mammoth's Worst Enemy? A Speculative Essay on the Role of Dogs in Paleoindian Colonization and Megafaunal Extinction. World Archaeology 37(1, Archaeology in North America):11-25... and my yet unpublished material...

[paleo_joe]

Great article. The guy is a Clovis-firster, sounds like, so we don't have to worry about any mention of ever finding a dog any earlier.

It is very interesting to me how dogs evolved from wolves, beginning with 'camp wolves' that stopped having set territories and started following people around, then some physical and perhaps behavioral mutations, and then man getting involved with the breeding, in which the dogs/wolves that were most docile and would protect the camp and your children got fed.

Fast forward 30,000 or 40,000 years, and they're laying on my couch all fat and happy while just about every other animal in the world is outside dealing with the weather. It's interesting how they evolved the emotional intelligence that allows them to bond with humans.

[drdave514]

On the wolf/dog subject, I recall a research project in which a person would point at one of two turned over cups to let the viewer know what was under them. A young child knew which to lift to find the "treat". A chimpanzee could not grasp the concept. A dog COULD select the cup based on the pointing. A wolf could NOT do it.

Dogs and people have developed a strong connection over the years and they are extremely aware of our visual cues.

[paleo_joe]

I believe the TV show that turned me into an expert on this topic talked about the example of how dogs "get" the pointing and wolves do not. The tiny mutation that allowed some wolves to understand things like that may have been the genesis of the modern dog.