The domestication of dogs from grey wolves is one of the most consequential events in the history of human-animal relations. Dogs are the oldest domesticated animal by a wide margin: sheep, goats, cattle and pigs were domesticated 11,000-9,000 years ago during the transition to agriculture; cats a mere 4,000 years ago. Dogs stretch back much further.
A burial at Bonn-Oberkassel in Germany, of a young dog alongside two humans, is more than 14,000 years old -- a time when Homo sapiens was still a hunter-gatherer. Genetic evidence suggests pre-Columbian American dogs shared an ancestor that lived 23,000 years ago. Most evidence points to eastern Eurasia -- either China or Siberia -- as the place where the switch from wolf to dog occurred.
Dogs arrived in North America about 15,000 years ago, crossing from Siberia to Alaska. A South-East Asian clade gave rise to the singing dogs of New Guinea (which yodel rather than bark) and the dingoes of Australia.
The "scavenger hypothesis" proposed in 2001 by Raymond and Lorna Coppinger holds that dogs evolved from wolves that scavenged near human settlements. An estimated half or more of the world's 700m dogs live as scavengers rather than as household pets. However, settlements with refuse dumps are products of agriculture, not hunter-gathering.
Maria Lahtinen of the University of Helsinki has proposed an alternative: ice-age hunter-gatherers may have accumulated surplus lean meat (since omnivorous humans cannot live on protein alone), which wolves tame enough to exploit could consume.
Brian Hare of Duke University has dubbed the process "survival of the friendliest" -- Darwinian natural selection favouring wolves that developed the ability to get along with humans.
Experiments by Kathryn Lord of the Broad Institute show that a dog pup requires only about 90 minutes of human attention to learn to get on with people, versus weeks for a wolf. A pair of neighbouring genes lost in the transition from wolf to dog, which if missing in humans cause Williams-Beuren syndrome, promotes extreme friendliness.
Dogs have evolved a special face muscle, which wolves lack, that lets them raise their eyebrows to make "puppy-dog eyes" -- larger, more infant-like eyes that hack human emotions.
According to a paper published in November 2025 by Greger Larson of Oxford University and colleagues, dogs' skull sizes were shrinking compared with wolves' some 8,000-9,000 years ago, and skull shapes were becoming more variable, paving the way for the diversity of modern breeds.
Zhokhov island, off Siberia, has yielded 9,500-year-old dog remains genetically akin to modern Greenland sled dogs, buried alongside what look like dog sleds. Cliff carvings in Saudi Arabia, 8,000-9,000 years old, depict hunting dogs. Guide dogs for the blind were introduced in 1916; hearing dogs for the deaf in the 1970s. The first British dog show was held in 1859. The Royal Kennel Club, the world's oldest association for dog owners, now recognises 225 breeds.
Half of American households (65m) include a dog. Dog food is a multi-billion-dollar industry.
By protracting life, we do not deduct one jot from the duration of death.