The Dog-Man Bond Begins
There is much speculation about when where how and why the dog-man bond first began. It could have been up to 100,000 years ago but the first conclusive proof dates back over 12,000 years to the earliest campsites. There is no doubt that the earliest domesticated dogs developed along with man.
Archaeologists have studied more than 400 campsites of 'pile dwellers' across Europe, Asia and the Southern Mediterranean. This section puts together results of archaeological as well as DNA evidence.
Mutual Advantage
It was to the mutual advantage of both man and dog that such a bond should develop. When humans were hunter-gatherers, both dogs and humans were social animals who hunted in daylight. So when humans began to live in small settlements alongside fertile river flats, wild dogs would have had good reason to benefit from this association.
Then humans probably would have begun the dog-man bond we know today by eliminating from their settlements any dogs who showed aggression towards them. Fossils from this time found skulls of dogs of various sizes which must have lived in close proximity with humans. These fossils also revealed bones of animals killed for human food with marks indicating they had been gnawed in a manner typical of a domestic dog.
Meanwhile the dog had a natural instinct to attach itself to man. There are many anecdotes and stories of what we call faithfulness, some dating back thousands of years.
‘this particular species of animal feels a natural desire or social inclination towards mankind, an instinct to be useful to man and from spontaneous impulse, attaches himself to him . . . takes delight in associating with us and sharing our abode. It is he (the dog) who knows us personally, watches over us and warns us of danger . . . while poverty drives away from us many a companion of our happier hours, it was never known to diminish the love of our quadruped friend’.[1]
Domestication into the Different Dog Types
The earliest evidence of the dog-man relationship or dog's domestication as far as different types of dogs are concerned, shows there were four distinct types of dog that formed relationships with humans as a result of the earliest civilizations. These were
- Hunting Dogs
- Sheepdogs
- Companion Dogs
- Wolves that became Domesticated
References and Further Reading
[1] William Youatt 'The Dog" published 1848 London Charles Knight Fleet Street (under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.) Page8