Where Were Dogs First Domesticated? What the DNA Studies Say

Nobody has settled where or when dogs were first domesticated. Dogs descend from grey wolves, and the Natural History Museum in London says scientists believe dogs diverged from grey wolf populations “sometime between 20,000 and 40,000 years ago.” The oldest dogs confirmed by DNA lived about 15,800 years ago at Pınarbaşı in Türkiye, according to a 2026 paper in Nature.

The studies below disagree on whether dogs were domesticated once or twice, and on whether the first dogs lived in eastern or western Eurasia.

Are dogs descended from wolves?

Yes. Dogs descend from grey wolves (Canis lupus). A 2022 study in Nature by Bergström and colleagues calls the grey wolf “the first species to give rise to a domestic population,” and the Smithsonian reports that “Researchers generally agree that modern-day dogs evolved from grey wolves (Canis lupus) at least 15,000 years ago, during the last Ice Age.”

A 2020 study in Science by Bergström and colleagues sequenced 27 ancient dog genomes and found that “all dogs share a common ancestry distinct from present-day wolves.” By 11,000 years ago, the paper says, “at least five major ancestry lineages had diversified.”

Where and when were dogs first domesticated?

The Natural History Museum says “the exact timing of when this domestication occurred remains unclear and is still being researched.” The table lists six studies and what each reports.

The 2016 proposal of two origins

Frantz and colleagues, writing in Science in 2016, generated sequences from 59 ancient dogs and a complete genome of a 4,800-year-old dog from Ireland. Their analyses “revealed a deep split separating modern East Asian and Western Eurasian dogs,” and they dated that divergence to “~14,000 to 6400 years ago.” The paper says this date “occurs commensurate with, or several millennia after, the first appearance of dogs in Europe and East Asia,” so the oldest dog fossils in both regions are about as old as the split or older.

From this the authors suggest “that dogs may have been domesticated independently in Eastern and Western Eurasia from distinct wolf populations. East Eurasian dogs were then possibly transported to Europe with people, where they partially replaced European Paleolithic dogs.”

The 2017 paper that found no support for it

A 2017 paper in Nature Communications reached a different conclusion. Botigué and colleagues sequenced the genomes of an Early Neolithic dog and an End Neolithic dog from Germany and wrote, “We find no genetic evidence to support the recent hypothesis proposing dual origins of dog domestication.” They also report that they “narrow the timing of dog domestication to 20,000-40,000 years ago.”

The 2022 study of ancient wolves

In 2022, Bergström and colleagues analysed 72 ancient wolf genomes spanning the last 100,000 years. They found that “dogs are overall more closely related to ancient wolves from eastern Eurasia than to those from western Eurasia, suggesting a domestication process in the east.” They also found that “dogs in the Near East and Africa derive up to half of their ancestry from a distinct population related to modern southwest Eurasian wolves, reflecting either an independent domestication process or admixture from local wolves.”

The paper adds: “None of the analysed ancient wolf genomes is a direct match for either of these dog ancestries, meaning that the exact progenitor populations remain to be located.”

The 2026 studies of the oldest dogs

Two papers published together in Nature in March 2026 add the oldest dog genomes so far. Marsh and colleagues generated nuclear and mitochondrial genomes from canid remains at Pınarbaşı in Türkiye (15,800 years ago) and Gough’s Cave in the UK (14,300 years ago), and from two Mesolithic sites in Serbia. They write, “a genetically homogeneous dog population was already widely distributed across Europe and Anatolia during the Late Upper Palaeolithic (by at least 14,300 years ago).” The Natural History Museum says the work “pushed back the earliest direct evidence for dogs by more than 5,000 years.” That study relies on ancient DNA, and the museum’s release says its researchers “recovered whole genomes from archaeological specimens older than 10,000 years” and “compared the genomes with more than 1,000 modern and ancient dogs and wolves from across the world.”

The second paper analysed 216 canid remains and recovered dog ancestry from a 14,200-year-old dog from the Kesslerloch site in Switzerland. Its authors say this ancestry is “inconsistent with the hypothesis that European Upper Palaeolithic dogs derived wholly from a separate domestication process.”

Early dogs and the people they lived with

The Natural History Museum’s release says, “The isotope analysis showed people at Pınarbaşı likely fed dogs fish, which, together with evidence that the animals were intentionally buried, suggests a close interaction between people and their dogs.” Simon Parfitt of the UCL Institute of Archaeology, a scientific associate at the museum, says that at Gough’s Cave “some bones show deliberate human modification, including perforations in mandibles, suggesting these dogs held symbolic significance after death as well as companionship during life.”

Laurent Frantz of LMU Munich, a co-lead senior author of the Marsh study, says that people exchanging dogs so early “means these animals must have been important,” and that “one possibility is that they acted as a highly efficient alarm system.” Archaeologists have also reported pet dogs buried with owners. Whatever their first jobs were, the companionship of dogs is part of why many pet parents keep dogs now.

Dog breeds are much newer than dogs

Breeds came long after domestication. The Natural History Museum says, “Over the past 200 years, the majority of modern dog breeds have been developed through selective breeding,” and that “A lot of modern dogs were bred by the Victorians to display specific traits and fulfil particular roles.” Its examples are Cocker Spaniels, “originally bred as hunting dogs to flush out game birds from dense bushes”; Border Collies, “developed for their intelligence and agility to help farmers herd and manage livestock”; and Great Pyrenees, “used to guard flocks from predators” in mountainous regions.

Larson and colleagues, in a 2012 paper in PNAS, describe “the primary center of dog breeding in Europe that began in the 19th century.” The same paper reports pictorial, written, and zooarcheological evidence for toy dogs, the smaller companion dogs kept as pets, spanning at least the last 2,000 years.

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FAQ on the history of dogs

Was the dog the first animal to be domesticated?

Yes, according to the Natural History Museum: “Dogs were the first species to be domesticated by humans.” The 2026 Nature paper on early dogs in Europe says “dogs were the only domestic animal to predate agriculture.” The museum places the divergence from wolves “long before the advent of agriculture, when humans were living as nomadic hunter-gatherers.”

Why did humans domesticate dogs?

Archaeological studies and genetic studies both bear on the question, and the Natural History Museum says, “The processes and reasons behind wolf domestication are still being investigated.” It describes two theories. In one, wolves “domesticated themselves,” which it calls self-domestication. In the other, “humans domesticated dogs to help with hunting large mammals.”

Sources

• Frantz, L. A. F. et al. “Genomic and archaeological evidence suggest a dual origin of domestic dogs.” Science, 2016 (abstract). pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.
• Botigué, L. R. et al. “Ancient European dog genomes reveal continuity since the Early Neolithic.” Nature Communications, 2017. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.
• Bergström, A. et al. “Origins and genetic legacy of prehistoric dogs.” Science, 2020. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.
• Bergström, A. et al. “Grey wolf genomic history reveals a dual ancestry of dogs.” Nature, 2022 (abstract). nature.com.
• Marsh, W. A. et al. “Dogs were widely distributed across western Eurasia during the Palaeolithic.” Nature, 2026 (abstract). doi.org.
• Bergström, A. et al. “Genomic history of early dogs in Europe.” Nature, 2026 (abstract). doi.org.
• Larson, G. et al. “Rethinking dog domestication by integrating genetics, archeology, and biogeography.” PNAS, 2012. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.
• Natural History Museum, London. “Oldest evidence of domestic dogs discovered in Europe and Türkiye.” 25 March 2026. nhm.ac.uk.
• Natural History Museum, London. “World’s oldest genetic evidence for domestic dogs identified in Europe and Türkiye.” Press release, 25 March 2026. nhm.ac.uk.
• Natural History Museum, London. “Wolves to woofs: The story of our oldest companions.” nhm.ac.uk.
• Smithsonian Magazine. “Dogs May Have Evolved From Two Different Wolf Populations.” smithsonianmag.com (Wayback Machine copy).