25 Mar 2026
Researchers have discovered the oldest dogs in the world at two Upper Paleolithic sites, which are 5,000 years older than the previous earliest genetic evidence of dogs.
The identified dogs are more closely related to ancestors of European and Middle Eastern breeds like the Saluki than to huskies. | © IMAGO / Ardea
The ancestors of today’s domestic dogs lived alongside humans for a long time, millennia before the first nomads settled down. When exactly the domestication from wolf to dog began, however, has remained shrouded in mystery. In a paper published in Nature, an international team led by LMU Munich, the Natural History Museum in London has discovered that dogs were likely domesticated during the Ice Age, thousands of years earlier than previously believed.
Pinpointing the start of dog domestication using traditional archaeological techniques has proved difficult. Early dogs are not only rare in archaeological record, but their skeletons are almost morphologically indistinguishable from wolves, and behavioral differences, likely the first dog-like traits to appear after domestication, do not leave any trace.
To get around this issue, scientists from across 17 research institutes analyzed ancient nuclear DNA from bones identified as potential dogs excavated from the Late Upper Paleolithic sites of Gough’s Cave in the United Kingdom (around 14,300 years old) and Pınarbaşı in Türkiye (around 15,800 years old). These data were compared with the genomes of over 1,000 modern and ancient dogs and wolves from across the world. Their results demonstrate that indeed, both Gough’s Cave and Pınarbaşı remains belonged to dogs – this discovery pushes back the oldest direct evidence for dogs by over 5,000 years.
“The genetic identification of two Palaeolithic dogs from Gough’s Cave and Pınarbaşı represents a step-change in our understanding of the earliest dogs. These specimens allowed us to identify additional ancient dogs from sites in Germany, Italy and Switzerland, which clearly show that dogs were already widely dispersed across Europe and Türkiye by at-least 14,000 years ago,” says Dr. William Marsh, postdoctoral researcher at the Natural History Museum in London and co-first author of the study.
The researchers also found that the newly identified dogs were more closely related to the ancestors of present-day European and Middle Eastern breeds, such as the Boxer and Saluki, than to Arctic breeds like the Siberian Husky. From this, the team concluded that today’s major lineages of dogs were already established by the Late Upper Paleolithic.
“This means that by 15,000 years ago, dogs with very different ancestries already existed across Eurasia, from Somerset to Siberia. This raises the possibility that domestication occurred during the last Ice Age, more than 10,000 years before the appearance of any other domestic plants or animals,” says Dr. Lachie Scarsbrook, postdoctoral researcher at LMU and co-first author of the study.
What role these dogs played in Paleolithic communities remains unclear. The researchers hypothesize, however, that genetically and culturally distinct hunter-gatherer groups in Europe and Anatolia may have actively exchanged dogs.
“The fact that people exchanged dogs so early means these animals must have been important. With limited resources, keeping them implies they served a purpose, and one possibility is that they acted as a highly efficient alarm system,” explains LMU paleogeneticist Professor Laurent Frantz, who led the study together with Professor Ian Barnes (Natural History Museum, London) and Professor Greger Larson (University of Oxford).
Reconstruction of Pınarbaşı 15,800 years ago, based on on evidence from archaeological excavations , showing early evidence of dogs and rituals. | © Kathryn Killackey
Isotope analyses of Late Upper Paleolithic remains indicate that people at Pınarbaşı likely provisioned dogs with fish. Together with evidence that the animals were intentionally buried, this suggests close interaction between people and their dogs, according to the researchers. As close interactions were also found at Gough’s Cave, where human funerary practices also extended to dogs, the researchers surmise that dogs held cultural significance across Paleolithic hunter-gatherer communities.
“Despite the fact that humans across Europe and Türkiye were culturally and genetically distinct during this period, dogs appear to have been integrated into these societies. It’s amazing to think of how these very different human groups, in very different environments, might have worked with dogs as part of their daily hunting and fishing activities,” says Ian Barnes.
Greger Larson adds: “By comparing the DNA from these ancient dogs with other ancient and modern populations, we were surprised to see just how closely related the earliest dogs were despite living more than 4,000km apart. This suggests that the first dogs were a game changer and spread rapidly across Europe.”
W. A. Marsh, L. Scarsbrook et al.: Dogs were widely distributed across Western Eurasia during the Palaeolithic. Nature 2026