Dog And The Child

The current consensus among biologists and archaeologists is that the dating first domestication is indeterminate. There is conclusive evidence that dogs genetically diverged from their wolf ancestors at least 15,000 years ago, but some believe domestication to have occurred earlier. It is not known whether humans domesticated the wolf as such to initiate dog's divergence from its ancestors, or whether dog's evolutionary path had already taken a different course prior to domestication. The latter view has gained proponents, such as biologists Raymond and Lorna Coppinger; they theorize that some wolves gathered around the campsites the paleolithical man to scavenge refuse, and that associated evolutionary pressure developed that favored those who were less frightened by, and keener in approaching, humans.
The bulk the scientific evidence for the evolution the domestic dog stems from archaeological findings and mitochondrial DNA studies. The divergence date roughly 15000 years ago is based in part on archaeological evidence that demonstrates that the domestication dogs occurred more than 15,000 years ago, and some genetic evidence indicates that the domestication dogs from their wolf ancestors began in the late Upper Paleolithic close to the Pleistocene/Holocene boundary, between 17,000 and 14,000 years ago. But there is a wide range other, contradictory findings that make this issue controversial.
Archaeological evidence suggests that the latest dogs could have diverged from wolves was roughly 15000 years ago, although it is possible that they diverged much earlier. In 2008, a team international scientists released findings from an excavation at Goyet Cave in Belgium declaring that a large, toothy canine existed 31,700 years ago and ate a diet horse, musk ox and reindeer.
Prior to this Belgium discovery, the earliest dog fossils were two large skulls from Russia and a mandible from Germany, that dated from roughly 14,000 years ago. Remains smaller dogs from Natufian cave deposits in the Middle East, including the earliest burial a human being with a domestic dog, have been dated to around 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. There is a great deal archaeological evidence for dogs throughout Europe and Asia around this period and through the next two thousand years (roughly 8,000 to 10,000 years ago), with fossils uncovered in Germany, the French Alps, and Iraq, and cave paintings in Turkey.