Jonica Newby: What would you think if you opened a leading journal and there was a big apology from scientists. Oh, sorry, you know that whole out of Africa origin of the human race thing, we¡¯ve made a bit of a mistake. You see we¡¯re actually out of Taiwan.
Well, that¡¯s kind of what happened this week, only it wasn¡¯t the origin of humans in question, it seems we¡¯ve been completely wrong about the origin of the dog. Peter Savolainen heads of team of molecular biologists based in Sweden, who¡¯ve come up with the new findings.
Peter Savolainen: We have looked at DNA samples from dogs from all over the world and what we find is there is much larger genetic variation in East Asia than in other parts of the world. And this tells us that it¡¯s the possible geographic origin of the dog.
Jonica Newby: And that¡¯s a real shock, because until now we¡¯ve always been told the domestication of dogs happened in the west. And it¡¯s not an insignificant event we¡¯ve got wrong here.
Paul Tacon: The moment we linked up with dogs is probably one of the most crucial events in human history. By domesticating the dog we learnt that we could control the destiny of other animals and indeed plants and this led to agriculture, and farming, zoos and ultimately the state of the world today.
Jonica Newby: Anthropologist and admitted dog lover, Paul Tacon. So how could we have missed the location of such an important event? Well, the best archaeological evidence of early dog domestication comes from Israel and Germany, but it¡¯s very limited, and of course Asia, and particularly China haven¡¯t been that conducive to archaeology in the last 50 years. There were intriguing clues the conventional story could be wrong though: one scientist noted a distinctive feature of the dog¡¯s cheek bone was found only in one population of wolves, Chinese wolves.
An earlier attempt to use DNA to locate the dog¡¯s origin failed, according to Peter Savolainen, because it didn¡¯t have enough samples from the east. That¡¯s why he was determined this time to get the samples no one ever had.
Peter Savolainen: We were taking DNA from hairs so we had to get in contact with people from different countries who were interested in dogs, and they would snatch a few hairs from the dog, put it in an envelope and send it to us by mail. It has been a slow process and without email it would have been much more difficult to perform this research.
Jonica Newby: Through the magic of email Peter Savolainen¡¯s team was able to get samples from previously unsampled parts of the world - Siberia, Mongolia and most importantly all over China.
For analysis, they split the samples into two groups, east and west, with the dividing line running from the Urals straight down through the Himalayas.
Peter Savolainen: We find a lot of different DNA types and almost all of them are found in east Asia, while in other parts of the world there is only a subset of these types. So that tells us that the dog originated in east Asia and then the dog spread in smaller groups to other parts of the world.
Peter Savolainen: Well, I have an opinion that perhaps the dog originated somewhere in China, and that is only based on the earliest high cultures in east Asia were formed in parts of China.
Jonica Newby: That would be ironic if China proved to be the dog¡¯s birthplace, given it¡¯s one of the few places to have ever banned dogs for being too bourgeois.
Savolainen¡¯s team also used the DNA to work out when the dog was domesticated. Earlier, he was part of a group that suggest it was up to 100,000 years ago. His new study used two techniques to get two possible dates - 40,000 or 15,000 years ago. But Peter thinks the 15,000 year date is a better match for the archaeological record.
Jonica Newby: But one man who¡¯s not too modest to comment on the study's importance is Dr Paul Tacon, anthropologist from the Australian Museum. And unlike most of his colleagues in Europe and North America, he¡¯s not all that shocked by the news.
Paul Tacon: I wasn¡¯t surprised by this new research result which I believe is incredibly important. We haven¡¯t given east Asia enough credit for many developments in human history over the past tens of thousands of years. It¡¯s probably true that early humans in east Asia played as much of a role as early humans in Europe or parts of Africa or west Asia in developing who we are today, and certainly the domestication of the dog in east Asia may have been one of those crucial things that early humans in that area gave to the rest of us.
Jonica Newby: When it comes to broader implications to the story of dog¡¯s domestication, Tacon says that¡¯s harder to pin down because the DNA still can¡¯t give us an accurate date.
Paul Tacon: The real question that remains is, exactly when did the domestication of the dog first take place. For instance, if the dog was domesticated 100 to 130,000 years ago, that¡¯s when certain modern human groups moved out of Africa and encountered Neanderthal in Europe and west Asia or Homo erectus in east Asia.
If the dog was with them, that suggests that that may have given them a competitive edge. If the dog was domesticated 40 to 50,000 years ago, that was the period where there was cultural change that underpins who we are today. Again it suggests that the dog played a crucial role in that. But if say, the dog was domesticated 15,000 in east Asia, one of the important implications there is we have archaeological fossil evidence in Germany in the heart of Europe to about 14,000 years ago, and what that means is that people from China to Germany had trading networks and they could spread ideas such as domestication, artefacts and other things right across the globe.
Jonica Newby: But while the research can¡¯t yet tell us exactly when and how dogs influenced human evolution, it does excitingly, finally explain why the most ancestral type of dog, the dingo, lives around here.
Paul Tacon: In a sense, I feel vindicated but what I¡¯d like to see is a lot more serious research focussing on east Asia and I think we¡¯ll find many more surprises to come as well.
Jonica Newby: And possibly sooner than we think. Because just as I was finishing up my talk with Peter Savolainen, I asked him about the dingo and he let slip something very interesting.
Peter Savolainen: Because we are just now looking at DNA from dingos and this will be published in the near future. So I might come back with more hard facts on that.
Paul Tacon Division of Anthropology Australian Museum 6 College Street Sydney 2010 Tel: +61 (0)2 9320 6249 Fax: +61 (0)2 9320 6058 pault@austmus.gov.au