Tuesday 15 December 2015 15.28 GMT

Descended from the grey wolf, domesticated dogs have been companions to humans for about 33,000 years, a genetic study has shown

Man’s proverbial first best friend was probably a grey wolf that may have made contact with the first human companions about 33,000 years ago, somewhere in south-east Asia.

About 15,000 years ago, a small pack of domesticated dogs began trotting towards the Middle East and Africa. Canis lupus familiaris made it to Europe about 10,000 years ago, and when civilisation began in the Fertile Crescent, and humans began to build farmsteads and villages with walls, dogs were already there to help keep guard, herd the first flocks, and demand to be taken for a walk.

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“Our study, for the first time, reveals the extraordinary journey that the domestic dog has travelled on this planet during the past 33,000 years.”

The grey wolf connection has been made before, along with the link with East Asia. The scientists, led by Guo-Dong Wang, a molecular biologist at the Kunming Institute of Zoology, have once more confirmed it. The indigenous Chinese dogs revealed closer links to their wolf ancestors, and retained the greatest genetic variety, another indicator that the domestic canine began somewhere in East Asia. The modern European specialist breeds showed less genetic diversity, suggesting that they descended from a subset of the first dogs, and the DNA of village dogs of Africa showed even less diversity, implying that they owed their origins to an even smaller set of migrant ancestors.

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Link:http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/dec/15/dog-dna-study-reveals-the-extraordinary-journey-of-mans-best-friend