Ancient DNA Reveals Europe’s First Dogs Came From Eastern Wolves — Not Local Ones

Early humans in Europe weren’t the only ones moving across the landscape. Dogs were traveling with them. In the largest study of its kind, published in Nature, researchers found that dogs were present in Europe more than 14,000 years ago, well before farming began. Instead of being replaced by new human populations, these early dogs remained part of later groups, continuing to shape the ancestry of modern European dogs.

“Dogs were the only domesticated animal to predate farming, so their evolution can help us understand how a big shift in lifestyle shaped our own history,” said senior author Pontus Skoglund in a press release.

Read More: Ancient Dogs Started Diversifying 11,000 Years Ago, Long Before the Modern Breeds We Know Today

How Ancient Dog DNA Reveals Early Dogs in Europe

Telling early dogs and wolves apart isn’t always straightforward. Their skeletons can look similar, and over thousands of years, DNA often breaks down or becomes contaminated.

Dogs were first domesticated from grey wolves toward the end of the last Ice Age, becoming the earliest animal to form a close relationship with humans, much before the rise of agriculture.

To get around these challenges, the team used a technique that isolates ancient DNA by effectively “fishing out” canid fragments from microbial contamination, a common problem in very old remains. The samples came from sites across Europe and nearby regions, including France, Germany, Sweden, Türkiye, and Scotland.

The approach allowed the team to classify about two-thirds of the remains as either dogs or wolves and is one of the most comprehensive genetic analyses of ancient canids to date.

“We wouldn’t be able to confidently distinguish dogs from wolves based on skeletal evidence alone,” first author of the study, Anders Bergström, said in the press release.

The results also overturned some earlier assumptions. A 13,700-year-old specimen from Belgium, once thought to be a dog based on its size and signs of human interaction, turned out to be a wolf, showing how misleading physical traits can be without genetic confirmation.

Europe’s Early Dogs Came From Eastern Wolves

Among the confirmed dogs was a 14,200-year-old animal from Switzerland, now one of the oldest genetically verified dogs ever identified.

It joins an even older dog, 15,800-year-old, identified in Türkiye in a related study, helping to extend the known timeline of early domesticated dogs.

Until now, the oldest direct genetic evidence for dogs dated to about 10,900 years ago, making these findings a significant step further back in time.

The Swiss dog was already genetically closer to modern European dogs than to Asian dogs, suggesting that domestication must have begun long before this point.

Across the dataset, early European dogs consistently traced most of their ancestry to wolves from eastern Eurasia, with only small contributions from western wolf populations. This suggests that European wolves played little role in the early evolution of dogs, and that dogs were not domesticated independently in Europe but instead share a common origin with dogs elsewhere.

Farming Changed Humans, Not Dogs

When farming spread into Europe around 10,000 years ago, it brought major shifts in human populations, including migrations from Southwest Asia.

While human populations were partly replaced or reshaped by incoming groups, dog populations show more continuity. Instead of a full turnover, the genetic record suggests existing dogs remained alongside these changes, even as new groups arrived.

This contrast highlights that human populations shifted more dramatically, whereas dog lineages remained more stable over time.

“It’s fascinating that dogs living before the era of agriculture contributed substantially to the genetics of farming and present-day European dogs,” said Pontus Skoglund, senior study author.

Today, many European dogs may trace roughly half of their ancestry back to these pre-farming populations.

Read More: Early Farming Societies Forged Bonds with Ancient Dogs in the Americas

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