The Powerful Connective Chemistry between Dogs and Humans!

“The domestication of dogs was one of the most extraordinary events in human history”- Brian Hare, Anthropologist

Human beings have established their homes and communities all over the world. But they didn’t do it alone; dogs have accompanied humans in herding, hunting, and sledding. The relationship with dogs goes back thousands of years further than with any other pet. Of all those animal alliances, our relationship with the dogs is the oldest for at least 30,000 years or even older. But, they all evolved from the ancient wolves which are purely wild animals and more violent in nature.

What makes these wolves from being our bitter rivals to man’s best friend?

Roughly over 100,000 years ago, human beings started to migrate and settled in Eurasia, the continent comprising all of Europe and Asia. At that time wolves were one of the main rivals at the top of the food chain for humans. Much like human hunters, they lived and hunted in groups. Further, they used their social skills to cooperatively take down larger animals. Using these group tactics, they operated as effective persistence hunters, relying not on outrunning their prey, but pursuing it to the point of exhaustion. But for some wolves, especially those without a group, human camps offered new opportunities. Those wolves showed less aggression towards humans and started to settle near their encampments. In overtime humans found a multitude of uses for these docile wolves.

Humanity’s first domesticated animal!

It has been believed that the tamed wolves would have shown their skills for track and hunt prey, guard camps and to warn about approaching enemies, so humans kept them around their encampments until they evolved into dogs. Scientists agree that all dogs descend from wild ancestral wolves, but they disagree as to when, where and how that happened. The domestication of wolves to dogs began almost 25,000 years ago. But this process may happened twice, independently, in two different places of western and eastern parts of Eurasia which are thousands of miles apart.

During the Bronze Age, some of the ancient eastern dogs migrated towards west along with their human partners. Along their travel, these migrants encountered the indigenous, ancient western dogs. So today's western dogs trace most of their ancestry to the ancient eastern migrants. This theory states that the ancient dogs are from western and eastern parts of the continent but not from the middle.

But, other group of experts explained that earliest of these Proto-Dogs were migrating across the planet with their human companions around 20,000 years ago. There is crucial line of evidence that the first accepted dog has been found lived 14,000 years ago, in what is now Germany.

Studies found that dogs release the same hormone oxytocin (love hormone) that triggers us to love and care for our own babies. Oxytocin can induce powerful anti-stress like effects on both of our species, which made clear why they have become such an important part of our lives.

The similar social structure between human and dogs made it easy to integrate with human families and learn to understand their commands. Eventually they moved from the fringes of our communities into our homes, becoming humanity’s first domesticated animal.