Dogs were widely distributed across western Eurasia during the Palaeolithic

Marsh, William A., Scarsbrook, Lachie, Yüncü, Eren, Hodgson, Lizzie, Lin, Audrey T., De Iorio, Maria, Thalmann, Olaf, Goor, Mahaut, Bergström, Anders, Noseda, Angela, Amiri, Sarieh, Biglari, Fereidoun, Borić, Dušan, Bougiouri, Katia, Carmagnini, Alberto, Giannì, Maddalena, Higham, Tom, Lebrasseur, Ophelie, Linderholm, Anna, Mannino, Marcello A., Middleton, Caroline, Mustafaoğlu, Gökhan, Perri, Angela, Peters, Joris, Richards, Mike, Sarıtaş, Özlem, Skoglund, Pontus, Stevens, Rhiannon E., Stringer, Chris, Tabbada, Kristina, Talbot, Helen M., Van der Sluis, Laura G., Bello, Silvia M., Dimitrijevic, Vesna, Martin, Louise, Mashkour, Marjan, Parfitt, Simon A., Vukovic, Sonja, Brace, Selina, Craig, Oliver E., Baird, Douglas, Charlton, Sophy, Larson, Greger, Barnes, Ian and Frantz, Laurent A. F. (2026) Dogs were widely distributed across western Eurasia during the Palaeolithic. Nature, 651 (8107). pp. 995-1003. ISSN 0028-0836

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Abstract

Archaeological evidence suggests that dogs diverged from wolves during the Palaeolithic, more than 15,000 years ago 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6–7. The earliest unequivocal genetic evidence, however, is associated with dog remains from Mesolithic archaeological contexts approximately 10,900 years ago 8,9. Here we generate both nuclear and mitochondrial genomes from canid remains at Pınarbaşı in Türkiye (15,800 years ago) 10 and Gough’s Cave in the UK (14,300 years ago) 11, as well as from dogs excavated from two Mesolithic sites in Serbia (Padina between 11,500–7,900 years ago and Vlasac 8,900 years ago) 12,13. Our analyses indicate that 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). This finding suggests that dogs were exchanged among genetically and culturally distinct western Eurasian Late Palaeolithic human populations, namely the Magdalenian, Epigravettian and Anatolian hunter-gatherers 10,14, 15–16. Last, we identify a major influx of eastern Eurasian dog ancestry during the Mesolithic, concomitant with the movement of eastern hunter-gatherer populations into Europe 14, which led to the establishment of the primary ancestry characteristics that define European dog populations today.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	The paper is published open access. The guidelines from the journal are the following: "Authors publishing via the open access route are encouraged to deposit the final published PDF in their institutional repository or any suitable subject repository on publication. Authors should provide a link from the deposited version to the URL of the published article on the journal's website; in all cases, the requirement to link to the journal’s website is designed to protect the integrity and authenticity of the scientific record, with the online published version on the journal’s website clearly identified as the definitive version of record."
Uncontrolled Keywords:	4* ,/dk/atira/pure/researchoutput/REFrank/4_
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Science > School of Biological Sciences
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation
Related URLs:	http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?... https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-0...
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	10 Apr 2026 10:30
Last Modified:	30 Apr 2026 15:00
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/102748
DOI:	10.1038/s41586-026-10170-x

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