- [Old Timey Narrator] Part wolf, part dog. Strong, vicious. These are no pets. - [Stefan] Dogs were the first animal
humans ever domesticated, descending from an as yet
unknown group of gray wolves that probably lived
somewhere in East Asia. This process of dog domestication began a really long time ago, maybe as old as 40,000 years ago; but definitely by 14,200 years ago, judging from this dog burial
in Germany at Bonn-Oberkassel, the oldest dog burial
archeologists have ever found. But when we try and understand how that domestication occurred, we run into some really tricky problems. Domestication requires a
really complex relationship between humans and the animal
we want to domesticate. This relationship is happening day to day, generation after generation. It's a very complex social
and biological phenomenon. A lot of papers that discuss
dog domestication though never really talk about
those relationships. They tend to focus on
the morphology of skulls and the bones and DNA, things like that. And that's perfectly understandable because these relationships
aren't really preserved in the archeological record very easily. One prehistoric site in Siberia though might give us some tantalizing clues into how these early societies
domesticated the dog. In the Siberian city of Ust'-Polui, along the probably
frequently frozen riverbanks of the River Ob, archeologists
discovered the remains of at least 128 dogs in
this prehistoric cemetery; lots of other finds too:
interesting artifacts, some really good science going on. So using Ust'-Polui as a template, we're gonna discuss some of
the really interesting factors that might have led to dog domestication and encouraged dog domestication. It's a really interesting case study. And yeah, let's dig into Siberia's
prehistoric dog cemetery. Isn't that right? (laughs) I'm liking it
in the woods, by the way, in the snow, because it just
gives the Ice Age vibes. These are pure Ice Age vibes today. (whimsical music) I have a small confession to make. I've never had a dog. Me personally, I've never had one. I'm more of a cat boy, really. So to help me with this
discussion of Ust'-Polui and the society that may
have domesticated the dog, I reached out to my friend David Howe. He's an archeologist. He's got his own YouTube channel. And he's a certified dog lover. And you love him. I suppose you love him. - I do, man. And yeah, they're just
like a quintessential part of being human to me. It's truly remarkable, dude. It's like an Ice Age predator that still lives with you in the house that hasn't disappeared. And even if you live in
a high-rise in Hong Kong, in a studio apartment and
have a little like Shih Tzu, or you live out West and have like a dog that helps you hunt, like it's still a remnant
piece of the Ice Age and like that artifact,
if that makes sense. - Okay, first thing to
consider, fundamentally, when we're talking about dog domestication is literally how did we
control the breeding habits of wild wolves? On a fundamental level,
domestication is the control of another animal's
breeding habits, right? We get to decide who gets to have kids. Or our actions
inadvertently push a species in one direction or another. In modern dog breeding, dog domestication, that occurs, whoa, by neutering them
(dog whimpers) or by setting the dogs you
like up on little doggy dates. (romantic orchestral music) But 2,000 years ago at Ust'-Polui, it seems they had a different method. Most of the dogs at
Ust'-Polui were very young. I've got the stats here. 71% of the mandibles younger
than estimated adult size. 45% younger than one year,
23% younger than six months. In other words, they were
killing these young dogs probably before they'd
had a chance to breed. Whatever rationale they
had for culling these dogs, they were domesticating them. If you kill a dog before it breeds, you've taken it out of the
gene pool: it's domestication. It's a little bit sad for our modern ears to hear that I think. It's a little bit sad. But realistically, for a nomadic society traveling through the wilds of Siberia, is there any other way to really
control the breeding habits of your dogs that are just running around? Probably not. Probably not. And in my mind, it also raises a question I had honestly never considered before: Was dog domestication even deliberate? When I've imagined dog
domestication in the past, I've always imagined it as sort of a positive selection of traits. We find wolves that had
characteristics and traits that we liked, and we selectively
bred for those traits. It's like a positive selection. But what if when humans
were domesticating wolves, turning them into dogs, we weren't selecting for
traits that we liked. We were simply killing
wolves that we didn't like, that were too aggressive, for example. - Yeah. Humans tend to do that
I think with a lot of things. If there were wolves that
were just outright aggressive towards human camps,
'cause we are in that area, an invasive species,
like we're from Africa, wolves might've been hostile towards that. And we're in their territory.
They're territorial. So if they came close to camp and we got little kids running around, they might have taken an that (indistinct) to the chest or something. And that would also cause the ones that are less fearful of humans and more, you know, nice, they would display that, 'cause people would be like, oh, that's just Rex or whatever. - It would be really odd I think if paleolithic hunter-gatherers
living across Eurasia looked at wolves and knew
that they could select for good traits, and in
several thousand years they'd have a dog or whatever, right? No one had domesticated an animal before. These people weren't farmers. They had never engaged
in this process before. No one anywhere in the world had engaged in this process before. I would imagine our relationship with dogs developed very slowly, very slowly, generation after generation. And that our paleolithic ancestors, when they're sitting around the fire, animals all in the
distance, there's a stream, beautiful, they were far more worried about aggressive wolves
than the friendly ones. Maybe they just let the friendly ones be and got rid of the nasty ones. David, why do you think
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with dog domestication is why even do it? What benefit does it
bring to the community to have all these wolves
following you around? One obvious answer is that
they can help you hunt. (soft music) Wolves are very good
hunters. They hunt as a team. They hunt exactly as humans do. They could certainly
have helped people hunt in prehistory and we know they did. Whilst researching this video, I found this really cool
artwork from Saudi Arabia. It shows a couple of people with bows surrounded by packs of
dogs, hunting animals. This artwork could be as
much as 9,000 years old. Like humans have certainly
been hunting with dogs for a very, very long time: thousands and thousands of years. Another very famous use
of dogs in the Arctic is as a form of transport. And that's certainly what
they were doing at Ust'-Polui. These dogs were found amongst the remains of harnesses and sledge parts, like wooden runners and
swivels and stuff like that. These dogs were certainly
being used for transport. There's even a handle of a knife which probably shows a
dog with a harness on. When I first saw this, I was like, "Ah, it doesn't look
like a very good dog." And then like just before
I joined our meeting, I drew this dog. And I was like-
- Oh, that's what it is. - And I was like, you know, actually, they didn't do that bad a job. (both laughing) Whether people in Ice Age
Eurasia were using dog sleds is really difficult to say. We basically have no
good evidence for that. Some hypothesize that these
really enigmatic batons that are found across
Europe could have been used to perhaps attach a harness,
called perforated batons or used to be called
batons de commandement; could that be connected in some
way to sleds and harnesses? Maybe. Maybe. No great evidence for that at the minute. The dog remains at Ust'-Polui may point to another reason
why humans domesticated dogs. And it's not one that
typically comes to mind when you think of a dog. - Like you can clearly see
that it's some kind of culling or it's some kind of
selective breeding process. 'Cause they're sacrificing a lot of them. And it's hard to say like, you
know, were they sacrificed? 'Cause you can't see how they
were butchered or, you know, the ceremony around it. But this many being killed indicates to me that either like they were using
them for food or something. I can't remember if the
paper addresses that or not. - At least like 5, 6%
of the remains I think were butchered for sure. 4% of the dog remains at
Ust'-Polui show cut marks. Now, granted, 4% isn't loads, but you have to bear in mind
the archeological record doesn't preserve everything. All we can say is that these dogs there were certainly being butchered,
at least some of them. And they might've been eaten. Who knows? Again, when we're trying to imagine this paleolithic society
domesticating the dog, what's their day-to-day concern? Is it moving through the
landscape or is it food? Are these wolves that
are hanging around camp guardians, friends, buddies? Or are they lunch? Are
they just literally lunch? And that maybe all these other
jobs that we have for dogs develop later after we
already decided to eat them. Not me. I've got cheese
and tomato sandwiches. But people do eat dogs across the world. And in Europe too. This is a photo of a dog
butchers in Paris in the 1900s, not that long ago. Humans in Europe even too
were chowing down on dogs. Another reason that these dogs
were skinned and butchered could have been for furs. The Nuu-chah-nulth, I think
I'm saying that correctly, who lived across Vancouver
Island, I believe, they even bred dogs in the same way humans
bred sheep for their wool, and sheared the dogs and
turned it into blankets. Until recently too. There's still photos of these wool dogs. I just learned that too.
I just learned that. Shout-out, Joseph. - Germonpre, Mietje Germonpre,
The researcher's name, her idea for other Paleolithic sites too is that dogs or wolves were
being used for their pelts. 'Cause rather than stretching
out a huge bison hide or reindeer hide on a thing, a wolf hide is a lot easier to tan. And you can also use
it to like sew up more. It's more flimsy than
like a thick bison hide, so you can like use it to patch up fur. Or maybe they were wearing hats out of it or wearing a wolf, you know, the classic. I think every culture wears a wolf pelt on their head at some point: Vikings, Native Americans, Romans. - Yeah, yeah. At some point everyone realizes, yeah, it looks absolutely badass to put a wolf skull on your head. (both laughing) - Exactly. And that definitely happened. With the amount at this site,
I would say that happened. - But yeah, thinking
about dog domestication, I think, again, before I was really deep into researching this video,
I had a very romantic idea. These dogs were our buddies. We were hunting partners.
We were doing this and that. And certainly dogs help humans hunt, but maybe the initial
motivation to domesticate them was just lunch and a warm jacket. That's a big concern. When you're living in the Ice Age, those things are not
to be dismissed easily. They didn't have cheese and tomato. Or bread. Or even bread. (wolf howling) Going more into the woods now. Dingley Dell. The dogs at Ust'-Polui were sacrificed. These were sacrificial victims. Not only is there just loads
of them all in this one place, hundreds of dogs; probably
at another time, even more: hundreds upon hundreds
of dogs buried here. Judging by their ages, they
were deliberately killed. And some of the bones have been modified. Some of these mandibles have
had holes drilled through them so that they could be suspended, either as an item of
clothing or perhaps on racks. Difficult to say for sure.
So much time has passed. But they were doing
something with these animals. Ethnographically too, from this region, we know that some groups in Siberia, some traditional tribes,
traditional peoples, nations, however they like to be referred
to, also sacrifice dogs. They would do this when
groups would come together to sort of keep the peace in the area between all these different tribes. Appease the gods, keep the peace. By the time it got to
the historical period, the Modern Period, they
weren't eating these dogs. That had become taboo. Maybe it always was taboo in
the region around Ust'-Polui, but they were still sacrificing them. Oh shit, this is slippery now. I need to appease the god dogs to let me down this slope
without cracking my back. Could it be that one of the motivations for domesticating wolves was to satisfy the religious
needs of the community, the spiritual needs of the community. I know some of you in the comments are gonna kick off at that idea. Bloody hell, archeologists and ritual, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But anybody who thinks that
humans don't go to great lengths to satisfy their spiritual ideas, you're straight up crazy. Of course we do that.
We do that all the time. People in the Paleolithic may
have been exactly the same. Exactly the same. If in this hypothetical scenario wolves had become essential to the spiritual needs of the community, it could have driven them to
encourage wolves to be around, to encourage dogs to hang around; so that when they met up
with their neighboring group, they had lots of dogs and wolves
to satisfy their religion, their needs, whatever it was. It's possible. It's possible. Humans do some out-there
stuff. We really do. These ideas as well are
not mutually exclusive. Something that was important economically or for your food can become
important spiritually. Maybe frequently it does
become important spiritually. And when we're imagining
societies in the past, we can't ignore the fact that humans sometimes act a little
bit irrationally, right? We are not just these pure economic units. Obviously we have to
eat and drink every day, but we have a lot going on up here. And people in the past did too. Dogs could have been domesticated
to act as sacrifices. So far, all we've discussed
is the benefit to humans. Why do humans do this? Why
would they benefit that? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But is there any benefit to
wolves being domesticated, to dogs being domesticated? What's in it from their perspective? Probably humans and wolves
are more successful hunting when they do it together. And there's some benefit
to that for both of them. Whoa, the snow is getting deep. But we're not really unlocking a new environmental
niche for wolves, right? Wolves can hunt on their own. They're very successful
hunters on their own. What benefit could there be to hanging around with us upright apes? Well, Ust'-Polui may hold one final clue. The dogs there ate loads of fish. And this isn't the only prehistoric site where dogs seem to be
eating a lot of fish either. - The Koster Site in Illinois is the oldest dog burial in the Americas. They ate a lot of fish. So whether there's taboos
around that or, you know, because you have that much
meat in a higher latitude to eat for yourself, you
then have the time and energy to do more fishing as well. It's not just subsistence where
you can feed all those dogs. But there are definitely places too where dogs are eating meat. It just seems that, I
didn't correlate that until you just said it, but in the Arctic, in North America, and
then at this site too, they're eating a lot of fish. - The Koster dogs David mentioned were these dog burials in Illinois that are about 10 to
11,000 years old, I think. Earliest evidence for dogs in
North America in the Americas. But I do believe almost certainly the first people to get to
America brought dogs with them. Whoo! Geez, it's getting cold. We just don't have evidence for it. But the Koster dogs also ate lots of fish. Now, wolves can fish on their own. When there's the salmon run, you can find a clip of a wolf fishing a salmon out of the river. Why wouldn't they? But
they're not great fishers. They're certainly not as
good at fishing as humans are with our nets and lines and traps. We take fishing to a whole nother level. There's no one who's as
good at fishing as us. Whoo! Believe it or not,
that's a lake right there. It's totally frozen. But a wolf can't fish in that lake. A human could though. A human could get a fish out of there. We're very good at getting
fish and mammals out of lakes. Maybe the environment that first bought humans and dogs together
was not like the steppe. I always picture it on the
steppe. I don't know why. Whenever I imagine the Ice
Age, I imagine the steppe. But maybe it was along
rivers, along coastlines, places where there was abundant
fish for humans to catch, abundant resources to
share with a pack of dogs. Think about it, once
you've got a pack of dogs following you around, or wolves even, that's a lot of food you need. That's a lot of extra food you need. 'Cause they're not getting it out of there on their own: no way. Did dogs evolve to eat fish? I don't know. It's possible, man. It's possible. These are the kind of ideas
we're thinking about today. (tranquil music) I was kind of hoping
I would run into a dog for this scene up here. Didn't though, did not. No dogs on the frozen lake today. As we said already, a lot
of the dogs at Ust'-Polui were seemingly sacrificed, disarticulated, skinned,
all of these things. But there were a few dogs that were treated a
little bit differently. In the same part of the cemetery where the only human
remains have been recovered, archeologists also recovered the remains of some fully articulated dogs
just placed in the ground. No holes in their jawbone
or anything like that. Now, it could be that
these dogs were sacrificed just like the other dogs were as well. And that sacrifice just hasn't left an archeological trace: very possible. But knowing everything we
know about humans and dogs, it's also very possible
that these dogs were pets, for want of a better term. These were the most beloved
dogs, the most cherished dogs. And they were placed in
the part of the cemetery fully articulated just with the humans, alongside the humans. Judging from the 14,000-year-old
dog burial in Germany, the Koster dogs in Illinois, humans had developed this
close relationship with dogs from very early on, way
back into the Paleolithic. This doesn't just say a lot about dogs and their domestication,
it says a lot about us too. - I would argue like even further too, like I think a lot of people
don't think about this. We're clearly human by the
time we're like painting in Lascaux and Chavet and stuff like that. We were human. But you're not truly human, like we can definitively say like, okay, we got this figured out, like our mind and stuff. When you're not only burying people but you're extending that
right onto a nonhuman animal, and, you know, treating it,
telling you like, I love you. Like I don't know if they
were doing that back then, but you're taking that
idea of like, I'm human, I have a life, I exist, and you're putting that
onto a nonhuman animal. So like the debate isn't
like when are we human. At that point it's like
you're passing that onto something else already. So like that's a significant marker for me in human mind evolution or just humanity. Anyway. - Yeah. - Are you getting a dog now? - Nah. Nah. I'm not gonna get one.
(both laughing) - [David] Sounds like the gear is turning. - How predictable is that? Hiked and filmed all the way
up this mountain in the rain. Soon as I finish, the sun comes out. Look at how gorgeous this place looks with a little bit of sun. Aargh. Nevermind. Such is life, isn't it? Such is life.
