“It was a huge surprise to see that it was a wolf and not a dog.” Discovery points to never-before-seen coexistence between wolves and humans.
On a remote island accessible only by boat and with no native land mammals, researchers found ancient wolf bones and immediately raised the question: how did these wolves get there?
The mystery still has no answer, but it is certainly making scientists rethink the relationship between humans and wolves in Europe. Bronze Age and reevaluate what we think we know about the beginnings of canine domestication.
The remains found in a cave date back to around 3,000 to 5,000 years. For the scientific team, the context is decisive: the presence of wolves in a place that could not have been reached by land indicates that these animals will have been transported by peoplein a deliberate and not accidental episode.
Furthermore, several signs point to a relatively peaceful coexistence with the local human populationrather than a persecution or conflict scenario.
“Finding these wolves on a remote island is completely unexpected”, he admits Linus Girdland-Flinkfrom the University of Aberdeen, one of the study’s authors, to . According to the researcher, the animals had an ancestry indistinguishable from other Eurasian wolves, but they appear to have lived side by side with humans, feeding on the food available in the communities.
The work also used genetic analyses, which reinforce the idea of an isolated and stable population over several generations. The bones suggest that wolves had smaller-than-typical bodies (something often associated with isolation on islands) and the genomic data reveals unusually low genetic diversity. Anders Bergströmfrom the University of East Anglia and co-author of the article, emphasizes that this pattern is compatible with populations subject to demographic “bottlenecks” or with domesticated organisms.
Although it is not possible to exclude natural explanations, the team argues that the result points to interactions and forms of human management that had not been considered until now.
Researchers are unable to determine, however, whether the wolves were pets, semi-wild or some other category in between, according to the study published today. Humans may have shared food resources such as fish and seals with them, and there are signs that some animals may have received care when injured.
“It was a huge surprise to see that it was a wolf and not a dog,” he said. Pontus Skoglundfrom the Francis Crick Institute, senior author of the study.
