Ancient World Review

18,000-Year-Old Puppy Found In Eastern Russia / Paleolithic Dog Tracks & Mummies

"The male puppy with its arrow-head milky teeth was less than two months old when it died. It was found in summer 2018 inside a lump of a frozen ground near Indigirka River, north-east of Yakutsk. Its full body, muzzle, and even whiskers and eyelashes have been preserved by permafrost." Source: Ancient Origins.

"The reason for the puppy’s death has not been determined yet, although its position did not suggest distress, unlike the previously discovered Tumat puppies [next video]."

Video from 2016.

Note: These aren't the only ancient mummified dogs (or wolves -- it's unclear in some cases) that have been found over the years:

"There are a number of recently discovered specimens which are proposed as being Paleolithic dogs, however their taxonomy is debated. These have been found in either Europe or Siberia and date 40,000-17,000 YBP. They include Hohle Fels in Germany, Goyet Caves in Belgium, Predmosti in the Czech Republic, and four sites in Russia: Razboinichya Cave in the Altai Republic, Kostyonki-8, Ulakhan Sular in the Sakha Republic, and Eliseevichi 1 on the Russian plain. Paw-prints from Chauvet Cave in France [next video] dated 26,000 YBP are suggested as being those of a dog, however these have been challenged as being left by a wolf." (Wikipedia)

Dog or wolf tracks described beginning at 2:55.

Dogs First Domesticated In Europe? (2013)

"A new [2013] study in the journal Science argues that the domestication of dogs happened between 18,800 and 32,100 years ago in Europe. They say European hunter-gatherer cultures were responsible for turning lupine foes into best friends, long before humans developed agriculture." Source: CNN (2013).

"It's a conclusion that barks up a controversial tree. The study goes against the idea wolves were domesticated when they wandered over to human agricultural settlements, lured by food. The study also contradicts previous research suggesting that dog domestication may have first happened in the Middle East or East Asia."

Note: According to an alternate theory described in the 2011 video below, wolves (more specifically, a certain type of wolf) domesticated themselves as a response to contact with early human settlements.

Domesticated Dogs May Have Evolved Separately In Europe And Asia (2016)

"A canine conundrum solved? Domestic dogs emerged from not one, but two wolf families at opposite ends of Eurasia, according to fresh evidence." Source: New Scientist (2016).

"Debate has raged for years over whether man’s best friend came from Europe or Asia, with genetic studies finding conflicting results.

"But it appears that both camps may be right. An analysis of modern and ancient DNA has revealed a deep split in the family tree of European and Asian dogs."

Modern European Dog Has A Single Geographic Origin? (2017)

This 2012 video mentions the theory that wolves domesticated themselves when they started to prowl around human settlements, looking for food to scavenge.

"By analyzing the DNA of two prehistoric dogs from Germany, an international research team has determined that their genomes were the probable ancestors of modern European dogs. The finding suggests a single domestication event of modern dogs from a population of gray wolves that occurred between 20,000 and 40,000 years ago." Source: Science Daily (2017).

Note: It's still unclear whether dogs were first domesticated in Europe or Asia or both, but this study suggests that wolves and dogs probably diverged earlier than previously thought:

According to Nature (2017), "[t]he latest research offers a little clarity on the timing of domestication and on the dual or single origin question. [Researchers] studied genomes from Neolithic dog fossils found in different parts of Germany — one from the start of the period, 7,000 years ago, and one from 4,700 years ago. They also looked at data from a 5,000-year-old dog specimen found in Ireland. The team then compared these ancient genome sequences with genetic data from 5,649 canids, including modern dogs and wolves.

"The researchers estimate that dogs and wolves diverged genetically between 36,900 and 41,500 years ago, and that eastern and western dogs split 17,500–23,900 years ago. Because domestication had to have happened between those events, the team puts it somewhere from 20,000 to 40,000 years ago."

First Dogs Were Young, Curious Wolves?

Note: The idea here is that the first domesticated dogs may have been wolf pups still naturally curious about their surroundings. Dogs, in other words, may be wolves who never grew up. This process is called neotony:

"Neoteny, also called juvenilization, is the delaying or slowing of the physiological (or somatic) development of an organism, typically an animal." (Wikipedia)

This process also happens in humans.

Stone Age Artists Obsessed With Horses

"Stone Age occupants of Europe had a strange fixation on horses. Almost one in every three animals they depicted on cave walls was a horse and the images are often larger and occupy more prominent positions than those of other animals. However, why the horse loomed so large in ancient minds may remain forever a mystery." Source: New Scientist (subscription access only).

According to Wired (2011), "Archeologists have found more than 100 painted caves depicting at least 4,000 animals in Europe, nearly all of them concentrated in southern France and northern Spain. They include France's Chauvet Cave, dated to at least 32,000 years ago and featuring the earliest known cave art, as well as the roughly 15,000-year-old caves of Lascaux in France and Altamira in Spain. Nearly a third of the animals in painted caves are horses; and nearly all of the horses are rendered in brown or black, similar to the bay or black colors of today's horses."

Some of these paintings included images of spotted white horses found in the Pech Merle cave in France.

Until recently, experts thought that these horses didn't exist in the real world because "ancient DNA analyses suggested horses during the Stone Age were only black or bay colored with no evidence for white-spotted patterns. This hinted that cave paintings of leopard-patterned horses were fantasy, not accurate portrayals. Some have proposed that drawings of imaginary animals might have had some kind of symbolic or even religious value." (Live Science, 2011)

This assumption turned out to be incorrect, however:

"The paintings 'Dappled Horses of Pech Merle', approximately 25,000 years old, depict spotted horses that look remarkably similar to the leopard pattern common in modern Appaloosas. Archaeologists have debated over whether the artists were painting real horses they had observed or whether the spotting had some symbolic meaning. A 2011 study using the DNA of ancient horses, however, found that the leopard complex, which is involved in leopard spotting, was present, and concluded that the cave painters most likely did see real spotted horses." (Wikipedia)

Mummified Lion Discovered At Saqqara?

"Egypt's Ministry of Antiquities says local archeologists have unearthed the mummy of an unusually large animal, most likely a lion or lioness." Source: Archaeology News Network.

"The ministry said on Monday the mummy was excavated in Saqqara, a town south of Cairo that was a vast necropolis in antiquity and is home to the famed Step Pyramid."

Last Mammoths Died On Remote Island

"The last woolly mammoths lived on Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean; they died out 4,000 years ago within a very short time. An international research team ... has now reconstructed the scenario that could have led to the mammoths' extinction. The researchers believe a combination of isolated habitat and extreme weather events, and even the spread of prehistoric man may have sealed the ancient giants' fate." Source: Science Daily.

Note: According to this scenario, the mammoths' habitat shrank during the warming that followed the end of the last ice age and a group of the animals ended up isolated on Wrangel Island by rising sea levels. According to Wikipedia, they survived on the island "until 2500–2000 BC, the most recent survival of all known mammoth populations. Isolated from the mainland for 6000 years, about 500 to 1000 mammoths lived on the island at the time."

Pygmy Mammoths Of The Channel Islands (California)

The pygmy mammoth or Channel Islands mammoth .. is an extinct species of dwarf elephant descended from the Columbian mammoth ... of mainland North America. This species became extinct during the Quaternary extinction event in which many megafauna species became extinct due to changing conditions to which the species could not adapt." (Wikipedia)

"Mammoth remains have been known on the northern Channel Islands of California since 1856. They were first reported in scientific literature in 1873." These pygmy mammoths are  an example of insular dwarfism, " the process and condition of large animals evolving or having a reduced body size when their population's range is limited to a small environment, primarily islands."

Note: Isolation can also lead to larger body sizes in some species, as shown in the next video.

Woolly Mammoths & Neanderthals Shared Some Genetic Traits

"A new Tel Aviv University study suggests that the genetic profiles of two extinct mammals with African ancestry -- woolly mammoths, elephant-like animals that evolved in the arctic peninsula of Eurasia around 600,000 years ago, and Neanderthals, highly skilled early humans who evolved in Europe around 400,000 years ago -- shared molecular characteristics of adaptation to cold environments." Source: Science Daily (April 2019).

"...According to the study, both species likely hailed from ancestors that came to Europe from Africa and adapted to living conditions in Ice Age Europe. The species also both became extinct more or less at the same time."