The question of who and how the dog was tamed is one that reminds me of that riddle about the egg and the chicken and which came before the other.

That said, let’s get on with it.

The court is now in session and The Honorable Justice Kayye Nynne is presiding. So let’s go ahead and look at all the evidence circumstantial and otherwise and here’s what we’ve got thus far:

• Popular opinion has it that the dog is descended from the wolf
• DNA evidence tends to support the wolf as the direct ancestor of dog
• It is widely believed that man tamed the wolf to become his four-legged best friend

Right let’s tackle these assumptions one by one.

Dog Is Descended From The Wolf!

It has to be so—right? After all several dog breeds look remarkably like wolves, notably the Alaskan Malamute, Siberian Husky and the German Shepherd to mention but a few; but more compelling is the fact that a comparison between dog and wolf mDNA shows a scanty 1 – 2% difference!

To give you an idea of how minimal this difference is, let’s slew it from a different perspective. This percentage difference is what is typically found between the various different races of mankind!

So there you have it! Pretty strong suggestive evidence supporting the wolf as dogs’ closest antecedent!

mDNA by the way refers to mitochondrial DNA, which is that DNA that originates from the mother alone and thus gives a more accurate genetic picture of where a species has come from (as compared to the history revealed by nuclear DNA) .

Why’s that?

Because nuclear DNA changes from one individual to the next as half of it is comprised of the mother’s DNA and the other half comes from the father whereas mDNA on the other hand stays true across several generations although after enough successive generations slight changes may occur due to minute mutations through copying errors of DNA damage.

Man Tamed Wolf To Become Dog!

We all know that man is a pretty smart critter; after all he is the king of the jungle called earth is he not? So it shouldn’t be too much of a stretch of the imagination to see man as the one responsible for having tamed the wolf to fashion dog.

Errrr…What Is Wrong With This Picture?

Hmmmm…let’s look at this assumption a little more critically. Intelligent as he was (at least for the era) did Mesolithic man really have the smarts to turn a wild animal into what in essence became a domesticated one?

Okay to answer that effectively we first need to tackle the rather confusing issue of TAME and DOMESTIC!

Tame And Domestic Are Entirely Two Different Phenomena!

Domestic: A domestic animal is one that has been tamed at the genetic level through selective breeding spanning many generations. Thus domestic basically means that the offspring of such an animal would be tame, positively oriented towards human beings and trainable to boot!

Tame: A tame animal on the other hand may refer to a genetically wild animal that is tame from the perspective that it was reared when young in the company of man and accepts his presence and that of other humans to some degree.

The offspring of one such tamed animal would not, however, be inherently tame, trainable or naturally and positively oriented towards man. Put simply the offspring of a tamed wild animal born in captivity would not, automatically, be tame at birth.

The offspring of a domestic animal however are tame from the moment they are born and have no natural fear of man.  What this means is that for an animal to be domesticated and thus inherently tame, it must be so at the genetic level and not merely through external manipulation!

alaskan malamute

Article on domestication of the dog written by Kayye Nynne