Sunday, April 07, 2024

Dogs and Wolves

David W Anthony, author and primary researcher for The Horse, The Wheel, and Language had a remarkable paper in 2017 The Dogs of War: A Bronze Age initiation ritual in the Russian steppes, about some rather grim details of how boys became warriors. I keep hearing that he is coming up with a book on the same topic, but nothing has shown yet. I want it. Dogs/wolves and imitating them shows up hugely in Indo-European cultures, but also in some of the abutting cultures.

There is a new paper on dog domestication by looking at the genomes of ancient wolves Gray Wolf genomic history reveals a dual ancestry of dogs 

"What emerged from this exhaustive genetic investigation was a nuanced picture of canine ancestry. While early dogs from diverse regions—Siberia, the Americas, East Asia, and Europe—shared a common genetic heritage with an eastern Eurasian wolf species, those from the Middle East, Africa, and southern Europe exhibited additional genetic contributions from a separate population related to modern southwest Eurasian wolves."

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