In this article
About 14,300 years ago, a dog's remains were left at Gough's Cave, at Cheddar in Somerset. People there pierced its jawbone after death, treating its remains much as they treated their own dead. In 2026, a study of DNA extracted at the Natural History Museum in London confirmed it was a dog, part of a population already spread from Britain to Türkiye1.
Ancestry from that population still runs through dogs today, modern breeds included1, and further back your dog's family tree reaches wolves. Which wolves, and when and where, have long been argued over. Ancient DNA, read from bones and teeth thousands of years old, has started to answer some of it. Here is what the genomes show, what they have ruled out, what is still unknown and what it means for your dog.
Why old bones could not settle it
Our picture of the earliest dogs has rested mostly on bone shape, and those judgements are often disputed4. Remains from Goyet in Belgium, about 34,000 years old, and from Razboinichya Cave in Russia's Altai Mountains, about 33,000, were first identified as early dogs from their shape. When their DNA was read, both turned out to belong to now-extinct wolf populations1.
Younger finds can mislead too. A small 13,700-year-old animal from Goyet, with marks made by people and red staining, had been suggested as a dog but proved wholly wolf4. At Kesslerloch, a Stone Age site in Switzerland, 62 of the remains that could be tested carried wolf ancestry and just one was a dog, though some may come from the same animal4. The researchers add that DNA cannot rule out that wolves like these were tamed or had other dealings with people4.
The oldest dogs confirmed by DNA
In March 2026, two research teams pushed the genetic record of dogs back by thousands of years. One identified dogs from Pınarbaşı in Türkiye, about 15,800 years old, and from Gough's Cave, about 14,3001. The other confirmed the 14,200-year-old dog from Kesslerloch4. Until then, the oldest dog confirmed by its genome came from Karelia in north-west Russia, about 10,900 years ago1.
The Somerset and Turkish dogs, from opposite ends of their known range, were more closely related to each other than to any other dog. They belonged to one population that spread across western Eurasia between about 18,500 and 14,000 years ago, among human groups who were genetically and culturally distinct, which suggests dogs were passed between them1.
The Swiss dog was already more like later European dogs than Asian ones, so dogs had begun splitting into regional groups well before 14,200 years ago. Domestication, that team reasons, probably came several thousand years before the Swiss dog lived4.
Dog history in DNA, oldest first
- Before 15,800 years agoWolves become dogs, at a time and place nobody has pinned down4
- About 15,800 years agoThe oldest dog confirmed by DNA so far, at Pınarbaşı1
- About 14,300 years agoA closely related dog at Gough's Cave in Somerset1
- By 11,000 years agoAt least five distinct dog lineages already exist2
- After farming beginsExtra copies of a starch-digesting gene spread, but became widespread only thousands of years later2
- The 1800sBreeding to closed pedigrees begins, and modern breeds take shape5
Cousins of today's wolves
One of the clearest results is that dogs did not descend from the grey wolves alive today. A 2020 study of 27 ancient dog genomes found that all dogs share a common ancestry distinct from present-day wolves2. Comparing dogs with living wolves can only go so far, because wolf populations have since died out in places and mixed with each other3.
Once dogs existed, they kept remarkably separate. The 2020 study found little sign of wolf DNA entering dogs since domestication2. A 2026 study found that the population the Somerset and Turkish dogs belonged to seems already to have been largely cut off from breeding with wolves, unlike pigs and cattle, which mixed extensively with wild boar and aurochs after reaching Europe1.
Finer methods have since found faint traces. A 2025 study of 2,693 dog and wolf genomes found wolf ancestry in 64% of modern breed dogs, but on average it covers only about 0.14% of their genome and comes from mixing nearly a thousand generations ago6. All 280 village dogs analysed carried some6.
Still looking for the ancestral wolf
To find dogs' wolf ancestors, a 2022 study analysed 72 ancient wolf genomes spanning 100,000 years, from Europe, Siberia and North America3. Dogs proved closer to ancient wolves from eastern Eurasia than to those from the west, which suggests domestication in the east3. Ice Age European wolves like those sampled were ruled out as the source3, even though the earliest dogs recognisable from their bones were found in Europe4.
Yet none of the ancient wolves was a direct match, so the source population is still missing3. Part of dogs' ancestry probably came from wolves living outside the regions sampled, and finding them will take wolf genomes from places where ancient DNA often survives less well3.
There is a twist. By the 2022 study's count, dogs in the Near East and Africa owe up to half their ancestry to a separate wolf population, related to today's south-west Eurasian wolves. That could mean a second domestication or later mixing with local wolves, and the study could not tell which3.
The 2026 study of the Somerset and Turkish dogs found that Near Eastern dogs from farming times onwards carried extra wolf ancestry, beyond what the 15,800-year-old Pınarbaşı dog had. The highest, about 19% by one measure, was in a 7,000-year-old dog from Israel, and the researchers read it as interbreeding with local wolves1. How many times dogs were domesticated is still unresolved4.
How a wolf became a friend
Genes record who was related to whom, not how the friendship began, and why dogs were domesticated has long been debated without a conclusive answer7. Here are the main ideas, as set out in a 2021 paper that proposed the third.
| Idea | The thinking | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Hunting partners | People tamed wolves to help them hunt7 | Untamed wolves make unlikely hunting partners7 |
| Camp followers | Less fearful wolves scavenged near people and slowly adapted7 | Ice Age hunters moved often and left little waste to scavenge7 |
| Winter leftovers | In hard winters people had more lean meat than they could safely eat, and fed the surplus to captive wolves7 | A newer hypothesis, built on calculations of Ice Age diets7 |
The oldest dogs offer a hint. At Pınarbaşı, chemical signatures in the bones of puppies that died around birth, which reflect their mothers' diet, point to food from water. Small freshwater fish, probably caught in nets, are common in the layers where people lived, so people seem to have fed the dogs, directly or indirectly1.
Something changed in the animals too. A small 2017 study compared 18 dogs with 10 captive grey wolves, all raised around people from puppyhood8. Given a puzzle box with sausage inside, and a person in the room, 8 of the 10 wolves opened it but only 2 of the 18 dogs did. The dogs spent more time looking at the person, and more time close to people8.
In the dogs, variants in two genes, GTF2I and GTF2IRD1, were linked to this extra sociability8. In people, the equivalent stretch of DNA is involved in Williams-Beuren syndrome, a genetic condition in which one feature is unusually sociable behaviour8. It is a small study, and the authors stress that all behaviour reflects both genes and experience8.
What it means for your dog
The genomes answer some everyday questions, and they are a handy check on claims that lean on wolves, from ancestral diets to breeds sold as close to the first dogs. These five come up often, and the studies above answer them.
Questions owners ask
Is my dog part wolf?
Only a sliver, if at all. Dogs and today's wolves are cousins2, and where breed dogs carry wolf DNA it is usually a tiny fraction from long ago6. The clearest exceptions are wolfdog breeds made in the 20th century by crossing dogs with wolves6.
Are breeds called ancient closer to the first dogs?
Not as far as genetics can tell. Breeds such as the Basenji stand out genetically because they largely avoided mixing with other breeds, which is not the same as being older5. The Irish Wolfhound, all but extinct by 1840, was recreated using Scottish Deerhounds, Borzois and Great Danes: the look survived, the ancestry did not5.
Where did Britain's dogs come from?
Partly from dogs already in Europe before farming. With farming came dogs carrying south-west Asian ancestry, but in three Neolithic dogs from Scotland it made up only a fifth to a quarter of their ancestry4. Modern European dogs may owe around half their ancestry to pre-farming dogs4.
Should my dog eat like a wolf?
Dogs' genes changed as they lived with people. Extra copies of a gene for digesting starch, linked to dogs adapting to farmers' diets, spread through dogs after farming began2. Ask your vet before any big change to your dog's diet.
Is my dog's friendliness in its genes?
Partly. Genes seem to play a part, but socialisation and experience matter too8. If your dog is fearful of people, or its behaviour changes suddenly, see your vet first and ask about a qualified behaviourist.
What nobody knows yet
Ancient DNA has turned old guesses into evidence, but the biggest questions are still open.
- Where. The places early dogs turn up need not be where dogs began, and the ancestral wolves have not been found3.
- When. Past estimates have ranged from 135,000 to 15,000 years ago; DNA now confirms dogs by 15,800 years ago1.
- Once or twice. A single origin with later mixing, or two origins that merged, is still debated3, 4.
- How dogs spread so far. Dogs spread across Eurasia and the Americas by the end of the last Ice Age, and no major human migration since people first left Africa has been found that could have carried them2. In western Eurasia, the study of the Somerset and Turkish dogs suggests, dogs passed from one group of people to another1.
The next clue may come from a cave nobody has dug yet, or a wolf from somewhere DNA rarely survives. Until then, the dog snoring on your sofa belongs to a family at least 15,800 years old, with roots in a wolf nobody has found.
Sources and further reading8 sources
The small numbers in the article link to the source behind each fact. Sources open on their own websites.
- Dogs were widely distributed across western Eurasia during the Palaeolithic
- Origins and genetic legacy of prehistoric dogs
- Grey wolf genomic history reveals a dual ancestry of dogs
- Genomic history of early dogs in Europe
- Rethinking dog domestication by integrating genetics, archeology, and biogeography
- A legacy of genetic entanglement with wolves shapes modern dogs
- Excess protein enabled dog domestication during severe Ice Age winters
- Structural variants in genes associated with human Williams-Beuren syndrome underlie stereotypical hypersociability in domestic dogs