Golden Mountain Dog Solutions

The oldest known evidence of human domestication of dogs is approximately 14,000 years old. Only a jawbone with some teeth attached, it was found in the 1950′s buried under the floor of a cave in the region we now call Iraq, and wasn’t properly dated until 1974. In his excellent book The Intelligence of Dogs, Stanley Coren finishes the tale:

“… the importance and age of this fossil were not recognized at first. This is because the fossil was of a dog so similar to contemporary dogs that the archaeologists thought a modern dog must have wandered into the ancient cave site and died there.”

It is safe to say that were you knapping your flint spear head by the fire in paleolithic times, the dog curled up next to you would be indistinguishable in appearance and behaviour from one you might meet on any street in the world. Read the rest of this entry »