Mongrel wrote:The oldest known evidence of human-dog friendship comes from a cave in France, 26,000 years ago, where the foot prints of a roughly ten-year old boy run alongside those of a proto wolf-dog as they explored the locations of cave paintings together.
A couple friends of mine were really doubting this for *reasons*, joking it was just a wolf following around the kid, but also seriously wondering if the traces were formed at the same time, etc. so I actually went and looked more deeply into and found a lot of really cool info.
- The boy was clearly not running and also stopped to scrape his torch at some point. As well, he slipped (without falling) a couple times on the slick muddy floor, so any predator would have had multiple opportunities for an easy kill
- The cave would have been a protected area (the back of the cave was a shrine, with bear skulls) and it is unlikely that a random predator would sneak deep into the human sanctuary as opposed to doing something far more opportunistic
- In some photos the prints do appear to overlap
- The wolf-dog is clearly walking and not running or stalking (unsurprisingly, stalking hows a different gait)
- The prints survive because they were imprinted at a time when the cave floor was soft clay - this was a temporary event lasting only a short time
- The biggest identifier of the "dog" aspect is a shorter middle finger which normally marks a dog from a wolf (one assumes that this is because dogs are less likely to flip us the bird than wolves are...). So this was a domesticated creature which was already well along the evolutionary path to the modern dog.
- The two sets of prints are clearly closely beside each other, following the same path
- Incidentally these are also the oldest human footsteps, which can be reliably dated.
What's interesting is that based on DNA studies and some additional evidence, scientists were actually already pushing the date of dog domestication back further than 15,000 years ago (which has stood as the commonly-accepted date for decades), and that the old theory of wolves being attracted to humans camps as scavengers is being displaced by a theory that the process began as a far more symbiotic relationship, probably at least 30,000 years ago, and possibly even 40,000 years.
This is important because it means that rather than being attracted to settled or semi-nomadic humans, the relationship instead developed with hunter-gatherer humans. The new theory is that the relationship might've begun as cooperation based on a similar "pack/clan" social structure (remember the notion of the "Alpha wolf" is made-up bullshit) and similar hunting ranges and goals which allowed for mutual cooperation and respect to form. The dogs would have helped to hunt with their tracking skills, and may have even demonstrated new hunting skills the humans could learn - in return they got a more reliable food source (which was already assumed) and protection for their cubs while they hunted (which is new!). The cubs being kept in the human camp also would have increased socialization and trust between the two species. It also means the discovery of the footprints fits with a new narrative already in development, rather than upending everything like science clickbait.
One last thing to note is that previously it was assumed older human tribes did not interact with or even know wolves because they were not depicted in most cave art - however, neither are humans. So speculation has changed to the idea that perhaps humans and proto-dogs both occupied the same mental space as "hunters", equals for whom it was taboo to make images of. Another bit of evidence is that humans of that era apparently prized canid teeth (not just dogs, but foxes, etc. as well) as ornaments - over 90% of the surviving ornaments worn were canid teeth, despite them only being 3% of the fauna (one assumes that early specimens of the three-wolf moon t-shirt did not survive). So there was at minimum some fascination or reverence for wolves and similar creatures.
tl;dr: You could clearly tell from the prints who'd been a good boy. <3
