Oldest dog DNA in world discovered – domestication potentially earlier than thought

  • Researchers have uncovered the oldest DNA evidence for dogs at two Upper Paleolithic sites.
  • The identified specimens are around 5,000 years older than the oldest previous genetic evidence of dogs.
  • The results enable the re-evaluation of earlier findings and suggest that the domestication of dogs began much earlier than previously thought.

Munich, 25 March 2026: The ancestors of today’s domestic dogs accompanied humans for a long time – presumably from before the first nomads settled down. When exactly the domestication from wolf to dog began, however, has remained obscure. An international team led by LMU Munich, the Natural History Museum in London, and the University of Oxford has now achieved a decisive breakthrough: Using analyses of ancient DNA, the scientists discovered the oldest genetic evidence of dogs. Their findings, reported in the journal, Nature, suggest that dogs were domesticated thousands of years earlier than previously believed. SNSB archaeozoologist Prof. Joris Peters also participated in the study. The specimens archived in the Bavarian State Collection of Palaeoanatomy played an important role in deepening our understanding of the early history dogs in Europe.

Oldest direct evidence of dogs

Tracing with exactness the origins of the domestication of wolf to dog through archeological finds is difficult, and not only because of the limited archeological record from the time before agriculture: The skeletons of wolves and dogs are pretty much morphologically indistinguishable in these early phases, and behavioral differences – a crucial criterion for domestication – do not show up in the bones.
In the new study, therefore, scientists from 17 research institutes analyzed ancient nuclear DNA from specimens found at the Upper Paleolithic sites of Gough’s Cave in the United Kingdom (around 14,300 years old) and Pınarbaşı in Türkiye (around 15,800 years old). They compared this data with genomes from of over 1,000 modern and ancient dogs and wolves. Their results showed that the animals from the Upper Paleolithic archeological sites were in fact dogs. Previously, the earliest clear evidence for dogs dated back to only 10,900 years – making these individuals the oldest direct evidence for dogs in the archeological record. According to the researchers, their results suggest that dogs might have been domesticated thousands of years earlier than previously believed.

“The genetic identification of two Palaeolithic dogs from Gough’s Cave and Pınarbaşı represents a step-change in our understanding of the earliest dogs. These specimens allowed us to identify additional ancient dogs from sites in Germany, Italy and Switzerland, which clearly show that dogs were already widely dispersed across Europe and Türkiye by at-least 14,000 years ago.”says Dr. William Marsh, postdoctoral researcher at the Natural History Museum in London and co-first author of the study.

Ancestries very different already 15,000 years ago

The new DNA data also revealed that the newly identified dogs were more closely related to the ancestors of present-day European and Middle Eastern breeds, such as boxers and salukis, than to Arctic breeds like Siberian huskies. From this, the researchers conclude that today’s major canine genetic lineages were already established by the Upper Paleolithic. “This means that by 15,000 years ago, dogs with very different ancestries already existed across Eurasia, from Somerset to Siberia. This raises the possibility that domestication occurred during the last Ice Age, more than 10,000 years before the appearance of any other domestic plants or animals.” says Dr. Lachie Scarsbrook, postdoctoral researcher at LMU and co-first author of the study.
What role these dogs played in Paleolithic communities remains unclear. The researchers hypothesize, however, that genetically and culturally distinct hunter-gatherer groups may have actively exchanged dogs. “The fact that people exchanged dogs so early means these animals must have been important. With limited resources, keeping them implies they served a purpose, and one possibility is that they acted as a highly efficient alarm system,” explains LMU paleogeneticist Professor Laurent Frantz, who led the study together with Professor Ian Barnes (Natural History Museum, London) and Professor Greger Larson (University of Oxford).
(Text: LMU München)

Publication
W. A. Marsh, L. Scarsbrook et al.: Dogs were widely distributed across Western Eurasia during the Palaeolithic. Nature 651, 995–1003 (2026)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10170-x

Image above: Artistic reconstruction of Pınarbaşı c. 15,800 years ago based on evidence from archaeological excavations by University of Liverpool. This shows dogs, the burial of pups, the local wetland landscape, but also our evidence for personal ornamentation, various foods including fish also consumed by the dogs, inferred basketry and ritual practices. 
Illustration by Kathryn Killackey