"I think it is possible that the dogs were used for tracking, hunting, and transport of game," she said. "Transport could have been organized using the dogs as pack animals. Furthermore, the dogs could have been kept for their fur or meat, as pets, or as an animal with ritual connotation." Ancient, 26,000-year-old footprints made by a child and a dog at Chauvet Cave, France, support the pet notion. Torch wipes accompanying the prints indicate the child held a torch while navigating the dark corridors accompanied by a dog. Susan Crockford, a University of Victoria anthropologist and an evolutionary biologist at Pacific Identifications, Inc. in Canada, told Discovery News that "this is an important paper." Crockford, however, is not convinced the Aurignacians domesticated dogs. She instead suspects dogs may have undergone "self-domestication" from wolves more than once over history, which could explain why the animals appear and then seemingly disappear from the archaeological record. Crockford details the possible process in her book, Rhythms of Life: Thyroid Hormone and the Origin of Species. She theorizes that the genes that control thyroid rhythms, allowing individuals to adapt to changing environmental conditions, can, over time, lead to the evolution of new species. "I think that for these Paleolithic-age canids, the process got started and then stopped, leaving some individual wolves with a few of the features of early dogs, but not all of them," she said. Germonpré does not dismiss Crockford's theory, which she described as "a very interesting model." She hopes more information will come to light in the future about these very early canines. An extensive study on their teeth and jaws is already in the works. Related Links: Susan Crockford's Rhythms of Life |
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