January 7, 2025 • 52 mins
Most folks agree: dogs are awesome. So, how did ancient humans and wolves end up hanging out in the first place? In the first part of this two-part episode, the guys explore the ridiculous, inspiring origin of the human's best friend.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Welcome back to the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Happy twenty
twenty five. Let's hear it for our super producer, mister
Max Williams.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Woof, woof, woof.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
I am Ben Bullen, joined as always with the man,
the myth, the legend, our very own bag man, mister
Noel Brown.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
I'm a regular human incarnation of elaboratedoodle. Nice. Nice.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Yeah, this is how we're kicking it off.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Guys.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
We're doing an on purpose two parter. We knew in
advance this would be uh, this would be a saga,
a journey. It's a dogs. We hope that you are
if you are a dog owner or dog friends. We
hope that you and your fellow pooch are listening along today.
(01:10):
We got to start off with this. Dogs are just awesome.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
They're pretty cool, you know. And Ben, I gotta add
you said this is an episode intentional two parter about dogs.
I would argue too, it's also about humans.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Yes, yeah, we'll get to the idea of co evolution.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Yeah indeed. But nah, man, you're right, Like, I was
never what I would consider a dog person until I
had a couple of special boys come into my life,
and I would say I'm definitely approaching dog person at
this point. But you point out, too, Ben and your
fantastic research brief for this topic, that most people, whether
they're dog people, are not, or they would consider themselves
(01:49):
as such, probably have a couple of, you know, doggoes
that they vibe with, right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Even if you don't particularly love the idea of dogs
in general, even if you don't want that close partnership
in your own neck of the global woods, you probably
ran into at least one or two specific doggos that
you dig. And so this time we are asking, at
the very beginning of twenty twenty five, how did humans
(02:18):
and what used to be wolves strike this bizarre, fascinating,
at times ridiculous covenant and very much is a covenant.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
For sure, And how in the blazes did these creatures
get so dang cute and have such sway over our
mortal souls.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Cough cough, oxytocin. We've got to say it right here
at the front, folks. The domestic dog is known as
the canus lupus familiaris in our fellow nerd circles. And
(02:57):
get this, noal. It is currently one of the most
widespread carnivores on all of the land.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Ben, something just hit me like a bolt out of
the blue. Familiaris you know how like you know, vampires
and witches and stuff, they have a familiar which is
usually some sort of pet that they keep by their
side that aids them in their infernal deeds or you know,
possibly benevolent deeds. No shaming here of anyone practicing the
aughts of magic, but it's got to be a connection there, right.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Absolutely a known entity. And if we tease that out
a bit further, Nole, what we see is in early
human civilization certain things that could only be done with
canines were very much like superpowers. You have a familiar
that can supervise, superpower vise whatever your flock of livestock,
(03:50):
whether they be goats, sheeps, et cetera.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
Heck, even just the act of fetching is a bit
of a power, you know. It's sort of like an
extension of yourself.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Yes, yeah, and today these creatures that you ridiculous historians
may be petting right now, they come in so many
shapes and sizes. They're found in pretty much every country
all over the world. There is no nation that has
a ban against dogs. We may well do an entire
(04:20):
episode on dog breeds in the future. So fellow ridiculous historians,
go ahead, get in front of it, tell us your favorites,
fetch us.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
Some photos, indeed, hit us with your picks. You know, Ben,
you mentioned the idea of no ban on dogs. I
love that you jumped right to the chase on that.
We've talked a lot on our other podcast. Stuff they
don't want you to know about how often in many
countries domesticated animals are off limits for consumption because of
(04:55):
something called speciesm I believe, is the term in which
humans prize value the lives of certain species of creatures
over others, and dogs tend to be front and center
in this way of thinking.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
I'll eat a lot of things as long as they're
not cute, say the humans. Now, of course we know
I appreciate you pointing this out at the top. No,
of course we know that in certain cultures and at
certain times of privation, humans have consumed dogs and cats,
and you know, each other, horses.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Sure, yes, I mean you know. I think I believe
you've been Some of your travels have sent me pictures
of places where they fully advertise that they serve horse.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Yep, that's correct, and I have consumed those fleet footage quadrupeds.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
And not to get too off track here, but while
we here in America might frown upon eating horses, we
sure as heck use the crap out of them for
our own financial gain and entertainments, don't we?
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Yes, just so, so, we do want to acknowledge again. Look,
when we say that human beings culturally have predilections or
social ways against consumption of certain other animals, we are
acknowledging that if worse comes the worst, humans will eat anything,
(06:23):
including one another.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
That's right. We've seen the Donner Party, for example, in
cases of humans being stranded in horrible situations and survival
becomes really the only thing.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Left Leningrad war zones. The list unfortunately goes on. Please
check out our earlier series on cannibalism. We promise we're
going to keep this pretty light because we are such
fans of dogs. In fact, Noel, when we were talking
to our pal Max here in twenty twenty five pitching
(07:00):
this dog episode, Max said, you know, guys, this is
definitely gonna be a two parter.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
Oh, yeah.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
We all three of us here love dogs on ridiculous history.
Speaker 5 (07:10):
Well, I mean, I think we're all collective just animal lovers.
Speaker 6 (07:13):
Obviously our love of cats is very well stated. But
I'm like Ben's like, I'm gonna trush runs down. Like Ben,
there's no point we're gonna go on forever about this.
We might as well just accept it.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
I will say I have a complicated relationship with cats
that usually lands on liking, but it sort of vacillates.
But I think that's the nature of cats, whereas dogs
just kind of give you their undying affection and love
and loyalty, and that comes in no small part from
their evolution.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Mm hmmm, yes, yeah. Dogs what we call dogs today,
are most likely the first non human animal species to
be domesticated by human beings. It's a bond that goes
back tens of thousands of years, so far back that
we are not sure how long ago this occurred. Somewhere
(08:02):
between forty thousand years ago, there were things that we
could call wolves on the way to doghood and the
things that we know could be considered dogs instead of wolves.
They show up somewhere around fourteen thousand to fifteen thousand
years ago. But fifteen thousand to forty thousand, that's a
(08:23):
crazy margin, right, that's pretty wide.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
Yeah, pretty wide swath indeed.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Yeah, And scientists as of now are still debating about
the history and evolution of dogs, the timeline of how
this interaction with humans, this great team up occurred. Here's
what we know so far. We got to talk about
the ancient past, Noel, what do we mean when we
(08:50):
say dog?
Speaker 3 (08:52):
Yeah, I mean dogs belong to a family known as
Canada has something to do with Canada, which is a
family of you guessed it, dog like species. You probably
know the hits, foxes, wolves, you already mentioned, Ben, Jackals, Yeah,
you know, kind of long probosis, having quadrupeds with waggly tails.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
The coyote as well. Yes, they branched off from a
family called Maya Cide about forty million years ago, probably
in North America, where that's where we see the evolutionary split.
That's why, to be quite honest, that's why they're not
domesticated bears for sure.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
And you know, Ben, what's interesting about this whole conversation,
among many things that are interesting about it, is this
is an example of I guess we could call it
kind of assisted evolution, right, yeah, yeah, like evolution that
is directly changed, the course of which, the branchings of
which are influenced directly by the actions of human beings.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Yeah, natural the artificial selection. I mean, maybe we explore
this ancient past with some journalism logic, old school j
type stuff. What when, where, and how did this amazing
friendship come about?
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Bitty bitty bitty bit extra extra you read all about
it now. It's true, Ben, dogs look different. There's so
many varieties of these, you know, fluffy creatures. You point out, Ben,
that ashitsu looks a whole lot different from a big
old mass stuff, and both of those look a hell
of a lot different from a wolf the og indeed, So.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Okay, this is true, and you might be petting your
favorite Pomeranian or in fear of a shaky Chihuahuah right
now as you listen to this. Today, most folks believe
modern dogs came from a relatively small population of now
extinct gray wolves from the plastine. And it was dude,
(10:59):
it's just like the first act of a good rom com.
Early humans and these wolves, who were again extinct, they
did not get along at first. They were rivals ecologically speaking.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
Yeah, I'm so excited to get into some of the
details of how domestication works. But the question becomes why
this particular subspecies of gray wolves. There's just something about
their demeanor kind of right.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Yeah, yeah, they had these they had this will they
won't they think? Going on for quite some time. I'm
sticking with this rom Cobb analogy.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
Yeah, right.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
They were competing for the same resources, they were after
the same prey, right, and they were largely carnivorous. If anything,
these two groups already had evolved to be incredibly similar.
Like humans, wolves are highly social creatures. They live in packs,
they have complex highiarchies. Although the alpha wolf thing, by
(12:02):
the way, is kind of a myth, just going to
put that out there. The lone wolf, the lone wolf
can happen.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Okay, Okay, there's a different the AffA wolf meaning what
like leader of the pack?
Speaker 1 (12:13):
Hm.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Just like the old Motown song which can legally afford
to play a clip.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
On, No we can't, but you can use your imagination.
You're hearing it in your head right now, I know
you are. It's a jam. So the members of a
pack more realistically, were kind of equals.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Yeah, so in a hierarchical environment, the primary thing is
going to be stuff like access to reproduction and who
gets to eat first. This is clearly also happening to
the human packs as well. Both wolves and humans are
what we would call nomadic at at the point where
(12:50):
they have this rom com and even their hunting strategies
were related. Noel, I'm sure you've heard the phrase persistent hunter,
persistence hunting.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Yeah, and not to mention hungry like the wolf.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
Yes, yeah, and both humans and wolves track their prey
over long distances, wearing down the sprinters, the ussane bolts
of the grazing world.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Oh yeah, we've certainly seen national geographic footage that is
somewhat triggering traumatic Dare I say of you know, the
wolves kind of running after a herd of grazing animals
and kind of picking off the weak ones.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Or a flock of seagulls. I just want to reference that, right, So, wolves,
at this time, and honestly at all times, wolves are
not normally attacking humans. Most non human predators are not
actively chasing the human being because humans are intensely inconvenient prey.
(13:56):
But these wolves back in the day, they are souper,
duper down with stealing and scavenging whatever they can whenever
they can. This was a rivalry that continued for thousands
and thousands and thousands of years until something changed.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
Well sure, I mean we've already kind of alluded to it,
but the human beings entering the chat changed a whole lot. Ben,
there's a Rudyard Kipling poem that I think sums this
up beautifully that I know you're a fan of the
Law of the Jungle. Yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
The most important part of that is probably the refrain
for the strength of the pack is the wolf, and
the strength of the wolf is the pack. Humans had
similar experiences. They learned to care for one another, right
to rear their young, to protect and feed them. They
got to the point where they got by with a
(14:52):
little help from their friends, and this is something that
we see wolves doing as well now in the brutal
Game of Nature. Shout out to David Attenborough at all.
We will see that usually creatures this ecologically close with
such a similar Venn diagram of aims, they will become
(15:15):
mortal enemies. They will possibly fight unto the point of extinction,
and for a long time, the smartest boffins in the
human world used to believe that early human communities would
kill adult wolves, kidnap their cubs, and then hand rear them,
(15:37):
effectively taming them, which is different from domesticating them. But
there's a big problem with this theory, Noel. It's the timing.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
Well, yeah, I mean it's like these types of shifts
don't happen overnight. This is a bit of a long game,
and like one cub being reared by humans does not
equate to a you know, full bore domestication of a species.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Yeah, just because you tame and pet one extinct gray
wolf doesn't mean all its kids are gonna be Uh,
what's a what's a funny dog breed?
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Oh? Well, you already said she'suu well and I said
labradoodle cockapoo sneuzer. Sure, Yeah, well, I mean I think
I get what you're putting down.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
Ben.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
The way evolution works is there has to be a
trait that becomes beneficial to the entire species entire, you know,
that allows them to flourish. And with man entering the equation,
it makes a lot of sense that over time, playing
nice with humans would be just that type of adaptation.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Yeah, yeah, just soon. That's a great point because if
you look at wolves today and you look at wolves
back then, they are relatively uniform in appearance, they are homogeneous.
The odds of a mutation appearing randomly in one wolf
in a captain population, even today, they're very small, and
(17:03):
it's winning the lottery four times in a row, probably
more in a row. To imagine a mutation that would
successfully breed through a population. So logically it would have
taken thousands or even millions of years to get the
diversity that we see in dogs. But if you look
(17:24):
at the fossil evidence, you'll see dogs appear pretty recently.
What we say forty thirty three thousand years ago. If
you fast forward to fifteen thousand years ago, you were
going to see unambiguously domesticated dogs, and Noel, they have
(17:50):
all the stuff that you were describing, right in the
bone structure, the changes in the snout, and perhaps even
more importantly, the changes in human interaction with those creatures.
Now we're seeing dogs buried with people. Now we're seeing
(18:11):
the you know, the beloved Fido shout out to our
Fido episode, you know, nestled up with an ancient human
and we also have modern evidence that shows us wild
wolves are different from dogs on a fundamental level. Like
you take a random dog, you take a random wolf,
(18:33):
they behave very differently.
Speaker 4 (18:34):
Right.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
There have been studies of wolf pups raised in captivity
that show that this would have been completely impractical. The
way that early humans live was pretty tough. I mean,
you know, there's no question about that. Survival was the
name of the game. So regardless of how much attention
or you know, love and care are given to these
(18:57):
wolf pups, the fact remains that they are wolves.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
Yeah, very much so, right, Like if you raise a
horse and you raise a zebra, you contame them both,
but only one could be domesticated. It's strange, and I
love that you're pointing out the time it would take
as a hunter gatherer to pay this focused attention to
this thing that will naturally bite you and will see
(19:24):
you as an ecological threat.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
So you got enough going on. You don't need that, nobody,
You don't need that drama.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
No, No, you're out hunting mammoths or whatever. You got.
You got bigger things to worry about. You're trying to
figure out wheels and fire. You know, you got a lot.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
Of projects one hundred percent. That's to say that you're
not going to purposefully keep around something that is not
benefiting you in some way. You know, this is like
very much a lean time where you travel light and
you definitely aren't keeping heck, human stragglers around. You know,
if people can't pull their weight in the hunting party,
they're probably not gonna make it either. So like having
(20:03):
a creature around that's nipping at your heels literally, or
you know the worst, actually biting you and drawing blood,
You're probably going to put an end to that real quick.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Yeah, can you trust this other entity that is not human?
Can you trust it to the point where you go
to sleep around it? The answer with dogs is yes.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
The answer with wolves is no, right, yeah, can you
have your infants around it? You know?
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Oh yeah, good point, because wolves are not really rule followers,
they're not into human rubric of behavior. This leads us
to the next question, which you so excellently foreshadowed. What
if some wolves effectively domesticated themselves.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
Because they saw a benefit to running with the humans.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Yeah, it's a theory we find in works like Dogs
a startling new understanding of Cadine origin behavior. And Evolution
by Raymond and Lorna Coppinger.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
Their Eyebrows stuff.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
It's it's a pretty great read. It's kind of controversial,
but it's one example of this argument. It suggests that
when humans moved from a mobile hunter gatherer society to
agriculture to a sedentary lifestyle where you had to stick
around and make sure crops made it from one season
(21:33):
to the next, their argument is that in doing so,
humans created a new parking spot, a new ecological niche
for the wolves in the area.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Well, it's just like you know in any situation, Like
I think it's Maslow's hierarchy of needs that once certain
certain needs are required to be met, shelter, food, et cetera,
once those needs are easier to meet, you kind of
open up the ability to focus on things like leisure
and perhaps companionship from a critter.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Yeah right, I love that you're bringing in Maslow. There,
we see that what likely happened is some of these
early wolves may have built a tolerance to the presence
of humans, and they at some point realize, look, if
you see humans around, they litter, they leave a lot
(22:25):
of leftovers, they leave a lot of trash. So we
can go to the human camp just like one of
those weird folks at a fish festival. Groundcourse is that
what they're called is they're called groundcour called.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
Ground where's the ground score? It's anything that you find
on the ground that a festival. Typically you'd be looking
for drugs, but it can be anything that could be
you know something, you love it, I love it. So
the wolves figure out how to groundscore.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
What a perfect term.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
And then they also evolved the well, they didn't really
evolve at this point. They sort of migrated their skill set.
The stuff they used for their wolf packs, they figured
out they could do the same thing for their new
human packs.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Well, there was a new situation that presents itself. And
it's a whole act of a lot easier to you know,
non a nice juicy bone that still has some meat
on it than it is to stalk and hunt and
kill your prey. Not to mention if human's presence and
their advantage in hunting is maybe thinning out the herd
for you a little bit.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
M that's a really good point. And perhaps, like so
many big changes, this happened in small steps. Uh, Max,
could you que us up some epic historical soundtrack.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
Brolicking good chap perfect.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Yeah, what's a way to it? Yeah, I like the
hand signals you're given there. All right, So picture this.
What if one of these ancient wolves long ago is
low in the pecking order of her own community, and
she decides to leave her pack and takes up a
life closer to a human community, like you were saying,
(24:18):
something with a more consistent source of food. And at
first she lives along the fringes, right, she hides.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
She's sort of like coming in like a thief in
the night and picking up these scraps. But then over time,
you know, perhaps the humans acknowledge the presence of the
wolf no longer as a threat. And the moment that
the humans stop immediately like killing these creatures on site,
but rather see them as a potential benefit, then there's
(24:47):
this kind of quid pro quote thing that emerges.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Yes, now look at this, they say, this one wolf
out of all these other wolves, it can smell better
than us, it can see better, it can hear better.
It warns us of predators. It also helps us find food.
It also guards you know, our little humans, human.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Ees like minimes. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Yeah, And eventually the humans also learn to tolerate this presence,
meaning that the descendants of our hypothetical she wolf reproduce
in like like around the humans. They grow tamer with
each generation. Sure, they eventually evolve more complicated behaviors like
(25:38):
guarding crops. That's another thing wolves do well, you know,
And it's funny.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
At the top of the show, I sort of mentioned
the idea of like sort of human assisted evolution. But
the more I think about it, like, that's just kind
of how evolution works. Humans are just another factor, you know,
that presents itself in evolution that over time become the
reason for an adapted trait that then, you know, over time,
(26:02):
with these generations of new pups being born among the humans,
that just sort of becomes an innate characteristic that is learned.
Is it a mutation though, because eventually long enough, I
guess the mutation does take place and their appearances begin
to change. The wolves, not the humans. Yeah, well humans
too a little bit. I mean, we certainly know that
(26:23):
early humans look different than what we know of is
more modern humans. But we certainly begin to see a
change in the physicality of what were once wolves and
are now starting to resemble much more closely what we
think of today as dogs.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Man, it's so wild to imagine sheep dogs, just sheep
dogs alone, working herding dogs. Their wolf ancestors would have
immediately killed the sheep, and now the dogs will go
on these honestly these action movie level mission to kill wolves.
(27:01):
There's that one guy I think we both saw who
just like killed eleven wolves and went and tracked them
down Liam Neeson style. Do you hear about this one?
Speaker 3 (27:10):
I don't think so, no Ah, He's a legend. Liam Neeson's.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
The dog version, the cade version, right, and you know,
shout out to you, Liam. If you're listening and you're thinking,
there still have the dog in me, well then we
got your back.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
I mean, but dogs definitely have a certain set of skills,
You're absolutely right, and those skills sort of develop over
time with further influence from their now human masters. I mean,
you know, like to your point, wolves would have immediately
eaten the sheep rather than helped the humans out, because
there's sort of a new I guess currency, because if
(27:47):
you hang with the humans, you're getting more consistently fed,
you're getting more consistently treated, you know, well, rather than
being out in the wild and fending for yourself. And
I know that's an oversimplify, but there is something to that.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
One hundred percent, you know, And it's perhaps one of
the most baffling differences, the idea that you could, as
a human society somehow impart the concept of rules, right
and object permanence upon this non human animal that could
(28:22):
you could say, Hey, I know we usually eat the sheep,
and don't worry, we are going to eat sheep later.
But for now, bro, I need you to just bark
if you see any wolves.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
Well, and it's just a long game, you know, trial
and error type situation, much like humans figuring out what
things would kill you if you ate them, or what
things were tasty and would give you sustenance. The same deal.
Like can you imagine the first person that decided to
try to train a more wolf like you know canine
probably didn't go well for quite a while. I you know,
(28:58):
I think about that a lot.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
I think they probably just threw scraps at a distance
and the dog, excuse me, the wolf on the way
to Doghood showed up. But I don't think there was
any petting. I don't think there were any belly scratches
for quite.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
Some time, and more modern psychology gave us sort of
a framework for understanding this, with things like the Pavlovian responses,
you know, and like being able to train the dog
with positive reinforcement. But they didn't have a name for
that then. It was literally just kind of making it
up as they went along until they got a result
that was desirable.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Great point. Yeah, we should also know at this juncture,
humans hadn't even figured out how to write stuff down.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
Exactly, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Yes, they were vibing, that's the way to put it.
And we may be romanticizing our she wolf situation a bit,
but we do know something like this had to have occurred.
Those gray wolves did eventually evolve into something like dogs,
and when they did those just like how we're saying
(30:08):
it's dangerous for the first human to try to hang
out with a wolf, it's dangerous for the first wolf
to try to hang out with a human, you know,
because historically, if you're a wolf and you see a
group of humans, you're not going to like howl at
the moon and then jump at them. You are going
to run away. And then after they leave, when you
(30:32):
can smell that they are gone. You were going to
run back to where they were and see if you
can eat any of their trash.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
Well, that's right, because I mean, you know, early on
in this relationship human and still today, there are wolves
that remain. And if you're in a sort of a
nomadic culture, or you're in sort of maybe some of
the more untamed parts of the world, you gotta shoot
wolves on site a lot of the time because they
represent a threat to your settlements, to your you know, community.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
Even places where it's illegal to do so, folks will
attempt to shoot wolves or poison them, or somehow murder
them because for them it is a direct, clear and
present threat. If you're a timid wolf, however, you don't
get in the human club because you're always running away.
(31:22):
So there's a Goldilock zone, as astronomers would call it.
The bolder ones are the ones who go up to
the edge of the firelight.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
And it's sort of what I was alluding to early
on when you talked about how there was a particular
group of gray wolves that were the sort of genesis
of what we think of today as dogs, and it
was something to do with their temperament they were a
little bolder, They were a little more curious, They were
a little more willing to check things out and not
(31:53):
immediately mall on site.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
Yes, yeah, they were not smash on site. They had
a little or vinegar with them. They were a family show.
So we're not going to use the other American idiom right.
One group of wolves we know split from the human
forest hunters. They went down a different evolutionary path. You
(32:17):
can find them now. This other group of wolves that
hung with the humans, they figured out quickly they didn't
have to be as fast nor as creative as their ancestors.
In fact, being slower was better. Being smaller was better
because smaller animals need less food. The main quality, and
(32:42):
we're still a natural selection here. The main quality these
individuals needed to have was a tolerance for humans.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
And would that group of the gray wolves that branched
off be what we would today refer to as Canus lupus.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Well, Canus lupus, yeah, this is you get to it
because the wolves that are alive now are not the
direct ancestors of the dogs that are alive now. Like
you're describing the pleastine, I believe it is pleastine wolves
that probably created dogs.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
They are extinct now and well, but what I'm saying
is that evolutionary split, the one that we know of
today as like that's a wolf, yes, is what we
would call canus lupus.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Yes, yeah, yeah, I believe that's correct. And during this split,
this is all taking a very long time, right, humans
are using I don't like using. They're working with these
primitive dogs to help hunt, to help protect the human
pack from bigger, madder predators. And at the same time,
(33:53):
as you mentioned earlier, dogs are using humans as a
consistent food source. Now, if you have never had to
live in the wild, congratulations. If you ever find yourself
in the woods with no help and no cell phone,
your biggest immediate concerns are going to be finding consistent
(34:15):
sources of water and food.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
And hopefully you get to league up with a white
fang type situation.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Right, yeah, of course, you know, dream big. This is
a mutually beneficial structure for the humans and the wolves
on the way to doghood. It's called commensal domestication. It's
a symbiosis of sorts. It's the same structure we see
in human canine relationships today. Like have you ever hung
(34:44):
out with a sheep dog.
Speaker 3 (34:45):
They're amazing.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
They love do it like they naturally love organizing stuff.
They're very type A.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
Absolutely No, I have not personally spent time with a
sheep dog, but I've seen Benji. Yes, yes, he's a
good boy the franchise. Yeah, stop hunting Benji seem pretty sharp,
is all I'm getting. He's super sharp. You nailed it.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
Our next question perhaps the billion dog tree question, know
where did this happen? Is it true that people still
don't agree.
Speaker 3 (35:24):
Yes, it's true, Like many things that occur over such
a massive timeline, some experts believe that this took place
for the first time in Europe, others in the Middle East,
others East Asia. Still not a particular consensus. You know,
as we've seen in many situations like this, there's probably
some truth to all of those. They probably there was
some parallel things going on. It just kind of seems
(35:48):
like that's pretty likely. But no, there is no scientific
consensus at this particular moment, though the Eurasian East Asian
origin story does seem to get the most support. So
this is a little bit more foreshadowing. We've alluded to
some potential plot twists coming, and we're about to get
to it.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
Yes, as the Cenabytes, I wanted to I wanted to
see if you would do this joke. As the cinabytes
used to say, put a pin in it for now,
it's a it's a hell raiser joke.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
They also used to say, we have such wonders to
show you, as we do as well, ridiculous historical wonders
to show you. You know, it's funny. Cinebyte is. The
more I think about it, the more it sounds like
sort of a dainty, you know, cinnamon roll thing. You
might get a cinnabon, you know, cinabytes please.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
Yeah, kind of like Buddy is naturally a name for
a dog instead of a human. Yeah, like Max, Max
is one of the most popular names for dogs.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
Borderline is a stand in the way that Fido is.
Max is making a face.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
We looked at the statistics Max and again that's We'll
get to the methodology later, maybe in part two.
Speaker 5 (37:01):
But Deal's voices now different.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Give me give me a give me a deeper voice,
give me.
Speaker 5 (37:08):
Higher than you're hired. Noel's the deep voice.
Speaker 4 (37:10):
Now I want to sound like Walter White. Okay, Apparently
there are these celebrity voice changer filters on Instagram now
Brave New World. Not necessarily in a good way, Max.
If you have any dog like qualities, they're all positive.
Speaker 6 (37:22):
Yeah, I would say, I'm a loyal person and I
don't do anything else, but just that, anything else dog.
Speaker 4 (37:29):
You also like pets and and a good walk the
good walkies.
Speaker 5 (37:32):
I do like a good walk that is true.
Speaker 7 (37:35):
So we have learned a little bit about a fraut relationship. Uh, Matt,
I'm not sure why you decided to take revenge on
us for the statistics about games. Is my voice not
the regular for a thing that is very much not
my fault your decision.
Speaker 5 (37:54):
No, you're the one who the brain statistics into this.
You could just ignore them like me.
Speaker 4 (37:59):
No, statistics are there to be fussed over and to
be pedantic with.
Speaker 5 (38:05):
Yes, exactly, I'm just kidding. Your voice is normal again?
Speaker 3 (38:08):
Oh great.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
When we try to figure out exactly when and how
domestication happened, we are seeing an interlocking set of mysteries.
And this is where you might say, Hey, go guys, Max,
Noel Ben, we as civilization, we know about DNA. Now,
surely we can just do some DNA testing a little
(38:32):
bit of forensic searching, and this will tell us where
and when and how wolves became dogs.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
Eh yeah, I mean it certainly hasn't stopped scientists from trying.
There are all sorts of advances in the research, but
the problem is, as is often the case, some of
this new information doesn't always provide answers so much as
it raises new questions and can yield to further modification
of the scientific data and less consensus between scientists.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
I like modification.
Speaker 3 (39:07):
That's great, that's great, so we know.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Oh let me correct myself here. It is a late Pleistocene,
not Pleacene. This extinct late Pleistocene gray wolf is the
nearest common ancestor to the dog, meaning modern wolves are
not the direct ancestral line. But secondly, we have to
(39:31):
go back to the idea of genetic divergence. So everything
we're learning about the DNA brings up that timeline question again.
And this is compounded or I'm gonna use it no,
because I love that phrase. It's modified by the fact
that dogs and wolves, just like horses and zebras, are
genetically close enough to reproduce with each other. They have
(39:55):
crossbread so often that, according to folks like Greg Larsen
at the University of Oxford. Their genes are a bowl
of soup.
Speaker 3 (40:05):
Yeah, I mean, it's sort of like what we think
of when we compare the DNA of humans and great apes.
But this is way closer than that, because I certainly
don't think anyone has ever suggested that humans and great
apes could could mate with one another with any level
of success.
Speaker 2 (40:20):
There's the human z thing, but again I guess that's
stuff they'll want.
Speaker 4 (40:24):
You to know.
Speaker 3 (40:26):
Definitely more the stuff of nightmares rather than interesting breeding choices. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
And there's a great article with Ed Yong, a journalist
over at The Atlantic, talking to Professor Larson, where he says,
you know, he goes, he goes tintoes down on this
soup analogy. He says, somebody goes, what ingredients we're added,
in what proportion and in what order to make that soup?
(40:53):
Meaning the long genetic story leading to Doghood. And he says,
the patterns we see could have been created by seventeen
different narrative scenarios. Shout out Jonathan, and we have no
way of discriminating between them. And this is where this
(41:14):
is where we see some amazing research nol Larsen teamed
up with other scientists human as far as we know,
and to figure out the answer from wolves to dogs.
He did what any good dog would do. He had
to search here over, He had to search for the
(41:35):
right bone. Ah, that was close. And what bone would
that be?
Speaker 3 (41:38):
Ben?
Speaker 2 (41:39):
Oh, it's called a petress. Here we can here, we
can play along at home. If you take your finger,
take any one of your pointer fingers you wish, and
you put it behind your ear sort of like mid
distance behind your ear. You might feel a bump. Do
we feel that bump?
Speaker 1 (41:59):
I do?
Speaker 3 (42:00):
Thankfully? Normal?
Speaker 2 (42:01):
Higher up? Yeah, yeah, okay, looking at Max, you got it.
That is your petrus bone. It's super dense, which means
it's fantastic for retaining DNA. If you try to pull
DNA out of most fossils, it's gonna be contaminated. It's
gonna be riddled with microbes and history. You'll get a
(42:22):
lot of DNA from a fossil, but they're a very
small percentage of it will come from.
Speaker 3 (42:28):
The I guess we should say the owner of the bone,
the creator of the bone, right, rather than the contamination
over time and a researcher named Dan Bradley of Trinity
College Dublin found the perfect specimen in Eastern Ireland's New Grange.
It's a forty eight hundred year old monument that actually
predates Stonehenge and the Pyramids of Giza. Pretty big deal,
(42:52):
very important site. Beneath it's a circular mound with you know,
massive networks underground chambers. Many animal bone fragments could be found,
and among those were the petress bone of a dog boom.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
Which means that if you can if you can extract
DNA from this petress bone, you will get as high
as eighty percent of the original bone owners DNA. This
is a burial site. It's super old. It's not necessarily
unique because, as we mentioned earlier, the careful, ritualistic interment
(43:36):
or burial of dogs. It's not forget the written word,
it's older than that. It's older than agriculture. People were
hanging out with, you know, their favorite doggo or their pooch,
way before they figured out how to grow crops on
a repeatable, reproducible basis. Dogs have been buried like humans
(43:59):
for thousands of years. They have been part of the
family since before humans figured out how to write. Family trees.
Speaker 3 (44:07):
Yeah, yeah, I mean you call a man's best friend
for no reason. Another important specimen found in Germany, the
famous bon Albercastle dog. Bon Obercastle dog shows signs of
some deterioration due to something called distemper, an advanced distemper
that suggested that it was cared for during a period
(44:28):
of illness. And another important specimen was found in Germany,
known as the bon Obercastle dog or hunt. It showed
signs of some physical deterioration due to a malady that
it was apparently stricken with. This dog something called distemper,
and it suggested some of the evidence on the bone
itself that it had been cared for during this time
(44:50):
of poorliness.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
Yeah, so someone said, oh no, bon Obercastle is sick.
He has a highly can tageous virus. And someone else
said what is a virus? And they said, never mind,
let's take care of our dog. This is, by the way,
similar to research that showed us how intelligent the Deanderthal
population was. They cared for their elderly. It's Another example
(45:18):
would be a dog found in Tunisia and a Roman
burial who was eighteen years old when they passed away. Yeah,
missing teeth, definitely had arthritis. These are just the things
we can know from bones, which means someone kept this
little guy around and loved him.
Speaker 3 (45:39):
Eighteen years old. The dog. The dog that's like, by
today's standards, an incredibly long life for a canine.
Speaker 2 (45:47):
Yeah, no kidding, and probably a hopefully a very well
lived life. If we look at this. We'll go back
to our buddy Larsen. He teams up with Laurent Frot
and they they take Bradley's research that petros bone in
New Grange and they say, okay, let's compare the DNA
(46:10):
from there to something like seven hundred modern dogs. Now,
let's try to build out a family tree. And they
found the tree they built again an all objective. It
had this obvious fork in its trunk. Sorry, that's just
a funny phrase.
Speaker 3 (46:29):
It is a funny thing.
Speaker 2 (46:30):
Yeah, it had this obvious fork in its trunk. There
seemed to be two different dog dynasties.
Speaker 3 (46:38):
Be Am I the only one that, upon hearing fork
in its trunk, I'm picturing like an elephant with two trunks.
Speaker 4 (46:43):
I don't know why.
Speaker 3 (46:44):
I'm just a silly guy.
Speaker 4 (46:45):
I like that.
Speaker 2 (46:46):
I pictured I pictured an episode of one of those
sort of copaganda law enforcement shows where they say, well,
the suspect did have a fork in their trunk.
Speaker 3 (46:57):
You mean like the murder weapon was a fork and
they found it in the trunk of their.
Speaker 2 (46:59):
Ca Well, we can't say anything until it goes to work.
Speaker 3 (47:03):
Okay, But back to the use of fork and it's
strunk for our purposes. One of these forks included all
the dogs from eastern Eurasia, like the Sharpei, which is
a delightful little sweetie, as well as Tibetan mastaves, which
are much more big bruiser dogs boys exactly the other one,
the other fork in said drunk, includes all of the
(47:24):
western Eurasian breeds and the New Grange dog.
Speaker 2 (47:30):
Which is the source of that original Petrus both. So
this leads Larsen to a fascinating hypothesis or fascinating piece
of speculation. We thought dogs were domesticated once, maybe thirty
something thousand years ago in Eurasia, but DNA seems to
(47:52):
indicate different populations of humans with little to no interaction
may have independent domesticated canines, not once, but multiple times.
Parallel thinking. As said earlier, it makes sense because a
good idea is a good.
Speaker 3 (48:09):
Idea absolutely, and the team responsible for this research also
calculated that the two dog dynasties we're talking about here
split from each other between somewhere around sixty four hundred
and fourteen thousand years ago. Another pretty big swath, but
the oldest dog fossils. Dog fossil be a great name
for a band, By the way, some sort of like
(48:29):
metalcore band are older even than that, which means that
when those Eastern dogs migrated west into Europe, there were
already dogs waiting on them there to buddy.
Speaker 2 (48:40):
Up and to larsen, this only makes sense if dogs
were domesticated more than once. To be clear, this is
not one hundred percent accepted by the scientific world at large,
but it's a pretty great guess. Again, it goes down
to the timing. Dogs may have been maybe domesticated just
(49:02):
the one time, split into other populations before the dawn
of history or recorded history, or they may have been
a great idea for various human communities at various points
in time and across the planet. All we know for
sure is that they were definitely domesticated in the ancient
(49:23):
ancient past, and they were probably the first animals to
experience the profound change we call domestication today, and domestication
is sometimes a misleading term or misunderstood. You could argue,
it's not a one way push, it is a two
(49:43):
way streaked it is a.
Speaker 3 (49:45):
Four kid trunk. No, it's a little different. Didn't quite
land so similar to some of our discussions on other
podcasts with our buddy Matt Frederick, stuff they don't want
you to know. We do have to ask or are
left with the question, what if those ancient wolves also
domesticated us? Dun, dun, dun. I've been made along the
(50:05):
way to answer this and other questions. We're going to
have to take a break here and start a new
episode entirely on domestication. Ben, there's a lot to discuss.
I know we've been teasing that. I'm so excited about
getting into some of the minutia of what domestication means
because I learned a lot about this concept that I
think is often misunderstood.
Speaker 2 (50:26):
Agreed, and we can't wait for you to join us.
Ridiculous historians learn about domestications. Send us your dog picks,
explore this with us. We're huge, huge fans of all
things K nine. We're also big fans of you and
you know who else. We're big fans of Noel, our
super producer, mister Max Williams. You can also find your
(50:50):
faithful correspondence on social needs. Should thou ship Noel? Where
can people find you?
Speaker 3 (50:58):
Yeah? You can find me pretty exclusively on Instagram, where
I exist at the handle how now Noel Brown, Ben Bollan,
I think I know yours?
Speaker 2 (51:06):
Yes, in a burst of creativity, I can be found
calling myself at Ben Bullen on Instagram, at the game
downt that down at the A lot of good folks
died at benbullin hsw on Twitter, or at the website
Benbollan dot com.
Speaker 3 (51:22):
Big big thanks, of.
Speaker 2 (51:22):
Course to Alex Williams who composed this bang in track.
Speaker 3 (51:26):
I love it everything no same man. I was gonna
throw the Max see if he wanted to shout out
any of his social medis, but apparently he's He's gone
scorched earth with that.
Speaker 6 (51:36):
I've left everything. Twitter was the last one that went,
and when it changed to X I try to stay around,
but I just constantly was getting emails saying someone's trying
to access your your accounts.
Speaker 5 (51:46):
You know what, I'm done?
Speaker 3 (51:47):
Goodbye.
Speaker 2 (51:48):
You'll have to find Max's Cats Twitter. In the meantime,
Please remember we are nothing if not open to discourse,
and that's why we always like to recommend our complaint department.
Please contact us directly twenty four hours a day, seven
days a week, every day of the year, at Jonathan
(52:10):
Strickland at iHeartMedia dot com.
Speaker 3 (52:13):
Indeed, he loves to hear from you, and you know what,
we'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Welcome back to the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Happy twenty
twenty five. Let's hear it for our super producer, mister
Max Williams.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Woof, woof, woof.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
I am Ben Bullen, joined as always with the man,
the myth, the legend, our very own bag man, mister
Noel Brown.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
I'm a regular human incarnation of elaboratedoodle. Nice. Nice.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Yeah, this is how we're kicking it off.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Guys.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
We're doing an on purpose two parter. We knew in
advance this would be uh, this would be a saga,
a journey. It's a dogs. We hope that you are
if you are a dog owner or dog friends. We
hope that you and your fellow pooch are listening along today.
(01:10):
We got to start off with this. Dogs are just awesome.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
They're pretty cool, you know. And Ben, I gotta add
you said this is an episode intentional two parter about dogs.
I would argue too, it's also about humans.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Yes, yeah, we'll get to the idea of co evolution.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Yeah indeed. But nah, man, you're right, Like, I was
never what I would consider a dog person until I
had a couple of special boys come into my life,
and I would say I'm definitely approaching dog person at
this point. But you point out, too, Ben and your
fantastic research brief for this topic, that most people, whether
they're dog people, are not, or they would consider themselves
(01:49):
as such, probably have a couple of, you know, doggoes
that they vibe with, right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Even if you don't particularly love the idea of dogs
in general, even if you don't want that close partnership
in your own neck of the global woods, you probably
ran into at least one or two specific doggos that
you dig. And so this time we are asking, at
the very beginning of twenty twenty five, how did humans
(02:18):
and what used to be wolves strike this bizarre, fascinating,
at times ridiculous covenant and very much is a covenant.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
For sure, And how in the blazes did these creatures
get so dang cute and have such sway over our
mortal souls.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Cough cough, oxytocin. We've got to say it right here
at the front, folks. The domestic dog is known as
the canus lupus familiaris in our fellow nerd circles. And
(02:57):
get this, noal. It is currently one of the most
widespread carnivores on all of the land.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Ben, something just hit me like a bolt out of
the blue. Familiaris you know how like you know, vampires
and witches and stuff, they have a familiar which is
usually some sort of pet that they keep by their
side that aids them in their infernal deeds or you know,
possibly benevolent deeds. No shaming here of anyone practicing the
aughts of magic, but it's got to be a connection there, right.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Absolutely a known entity. And if we tease that out
a bit further, Nole, what we see is in early
human civilization certain things that could only be done with
canines were very much like superpowers. You have a familiar
that can supervise, superpower vise whatever your flock of livestock,
(03:50):
whether they be goats, sheeps, et cetera.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
Heck, even just the act of fetching is a bit
of a power, you know. It's sort of like an
extension of yourself.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Yes, yeah, and today these creatures that you ridiculous historians
may be petting right now, they come in so many
shapes and sizes. They're found in pretty much every country
all over the world. There is no nation that has
a ban against dogs. We may well do an entire
(04:20):
episode on dog breeds in the future. So fellow ridiculous historians,
go ahead, get in front of it, tell us your favorites,
fetch us.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
Some photos, indeed, hit us with your picks. You know, Ben,
you mentioned the idea of no ban on dogs. I
love that you jumped right to the chase on that.
We've talked a lot on our other podcast. Stuff they
don't want you to know about how often in many
countries domesticated animals are off limits for consumption because of
(04:55):
something called speciesm I believe, is the term in which
humans prize value the lives of certain species of creatures
over others, and dogs tend to be front and center
in this way of thinking.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
I'll eat a lot of things as long as they're
not cute, say the humans. Now, of course we know
I appreciate you pointing this out at the top. No,
of course we know that in certain cultures and at
certain times of privation, humans have consumed dogs and cats,
and you know, each other, horses.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Sure, yes, I mean you know. I think I believe
you've been Some of your travels have sent me pictures
of places where they fully advertise that they serve horse.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Yep, that's correct, and I have consumed those fleet footage quadrupeds.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
And not to get too off track here, but while
we here in America might frown upon eating horses, we
sure as heck use the crap out of them for
our own financial gain and entertainments, don't we?
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Yes, just so, so, we do want to acknowledge again. Look,
when we say that human beings culturally have predilections or
social ways against consumption of certain other animals, we are
acknowledging that if worse comes the worst, humans will eat anything,
(06:23):
including one another.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
That's right. We've seen the Donner Party, for example, in
cases of humans being stranded in horrible situations and survival
becomes really the only thing.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Left Leningrad war zones. The list unfortunately goes on. Please
check out our earlier series on cannibalism. We promise we're
going to keep this pretty light because we are such
fans of dogs. In fact, Noel, when we were talking
to our pal Max here in twenty twenty five pitching
(07:00):
this dog episode, Max said, you know, guys, this is
definitely gonna be a two parter.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
Oh, yeah.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
We all three of us here love dogs on ridiculous history.
Speaker 5 (07:10):
Well, I mean, I think we're all collective just animal lovers.
Speaker 6 (07:13):
Obviously our love of cats is very well stated. But
I'm like Ben's like, I'm gonna trush runs down. Like Ben,
there's no point we're gonna go on forever about this.
We might as well just accept it.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
I will say I have a complicated relationship with cats
that usually lands on liking, but it sort of vacillates.
But I think that's the nature of cats, whereas dogs
just kind of give you their undying affection and love
and loyalty, and that comes in no small part from
their evolution.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Mm hmmm, yes, yeah. Dogs what we call dogs today,
are most likely the first non human animal species to
be domesticated by human beings. It's a bond that goes
back tens of thousands of years, so far back that
we are not sure how long ago this occurred. Somewhere
(08:02):
between forty thousand years ago, there were things that we
could call wolves on the way to doghood and the
things that we know could be considered dogs instead of wolves.
They show up somewhere around fourteen thousand to fifteen thousand
years ago. But fifteen thousand to forty thousand, that's a
(08:23):
crazy margin, right, that's pretty wide.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
Yeah, pretty wide swath indeed.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Yeah, And scientists as of now are still debating about
the history and evolution of dogs, the timeline of how
this interaction with humans, this great team up occurred. Here's
what we know so far. We got to talk about
the ancient past, Noel, what do we mean when we
(08:50):
say dog?
Speaker 3 (08:52):
Yeah, I mean dogs belong to a family known as
Canada has something to do with Canada, which is a
family of you guessed it, dog like species. You probably
know the hits, foxes, wolves, you already mentioned, Ben, Jackals, Yeah,
you know, kind of long probosis, having quadrupeds with waggly tails.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
The coyote as well. Yes, they branched off from a
family called Maya Cide about forty million years ago, probably
in North America, where that's where we see the evolutionary split.
That's why, to be quite honest, that's why they're not
domesticated bears for sure.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
And you know, Ben, what's interesting about this whole conversation,
among many things that are interesting about it, is this
is an example of I guess we could call it
kind of assisted evolution, right, yeah, yeah, like evolution that
is directly changed, the course of which, the branchings of
which are influenced directly by the actions of human beings.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Yeah, natural the artificial selection. I mean, maybe we explore
this ancient past with some journalism logic, old school j
type stuff. What when, where, and how did this amazing
friendship come about?
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Bitty bitty bitty bit extra extra you read all about
it now. It's true, Ben, dogs look different. There's so
many varieties of these, you know, fluffy creatures. You point out, Ben,
that ashitsu looks a whole lot different from a big
old mass stuff, and both of those look a hell
of a lot different from a wolf the og indeed, So.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Okay, this is true, and you might be petting your
favorite Pomeranian or in fear of a shaky Chihuahuah right
now as you listen to this. Today, most folks believe
modern dogs came from a relatively small population of now
extinct gray wolves from the plastine. And it was dude,
(10:59):
it's just like the first act of a good rom com.
Early humans and these wolves, who were again extinct, they
did not get along at first. They were rivals ecologically speaking.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
Yeah, I'm so excited to get into some of the
details of how domestication works. But the question becomes why
this particular subspecies of gray wolves. There's just something about
their demeanor kind of right.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Yeah, yeah, they had these they had this will they
won't they think? Going on for quite some time. I'm
sticking with this rom Cobb analogy.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
Yeah, right.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
They were competing for the same resources, they were after
the same prey, right, and they were largely carnivorous. If anything,
these two groups already had evolved to be incredibly similar.
Like humans, wolves are highly social creatures. They live in packs,
they have complex highiarchies. Although the alpha wolf thing, by
(12:02):
the way, is kind of a myth, just going to
put that out there. The lone wolf, the lone wolf
can happen.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Okay, Okay, there's a different the AffA wolf meaning what
like leader of the pack?
Speaker 1 (12:13):
Hm.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Just like the old Motown song which can legally afford
to play a clip.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
On, No we can't, but you can use your imagination.
You're hearing it in your head right now, I know
you are. It's a jam. So the members of a
pack more realistically, were kind of equals.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Yeah, so in a hierarchical environment, the primary thing is
going to be stuff like access to reproduction and who
gets to eat first. This is clearly also happening to
the human packs as well. Both wolves and humans are
what we would call nomadic at at the point where
(12:50):
they have this rom com and even their hunting strategies
were related. Noel, I'm sure you've heard the phrase persistent hunter,
persistence hunting.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Yeah, and not to mention hungry like the wolf.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
Yes, yeah, and both humans and wolves track their prey
over long distances, wearing down the sprinters, the ussane bolts
of the grazing world.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Oh yeah, we've certainly seen national geographic footage that is
somewhat triggering traumatic Dare I say of you know, the
wolves kind of running after a herd of grazing animals
and kind of picking off the weak ones.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Or a flock of seagulls. I just want to reference that, right, So, wolves,
at this time, and honestly at all times, wolves are
not normally attacking humans. Most non human predators are not
actively chasing the human being because humans are intensely inconvenient prey.
(13:56):
But these wolves back in the day, they are souper,
duper down with stealing and scavenging whatever they can whenever
they can. This was a rivalry that continued for thousands
and thousands and thousands of years until something changed.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
Well sure, I mean we've already kind of alluded to it,
but the human beings entering the chat changed a whole lot. Ben,
there's a Rudyard Kipling poem that I think sums this
up beautifully that I know you're a fan of the
Law of the Jungle. Yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
The most important part of that is probably the refrain
for the strength of the pack is the wolf, and
the strength of the wolf is the pack. Humans had
similar experiences. They learned to care for one another, right
to rear their young, to protect and feed them. They
got to the point where they got by with a
(14:52):
little help from their friends, and this is something that
we see wolves doing as well now in the brutal
Game of Nature. Shout out to David Attenborough at all.
We will see that usually creatures this ecologically close with
such a similar Venn diagram of aims, they will become
(15:15):
mortal enemies. They will possibly fight unto the point of extinction,
and for a long time, the smartest boffins in the
human world used to believe that early human communities would
kill adult wolves, kidnap their cubs, and then hand rear them,
(15:37):
effectively taming them, which is different from domesticating them. But
there's a big problem with this theory, Noel. It's the timing.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
Well, yeah, I mean it's like these types of shifts
don't happen overnight. This is a bit of a long game,
and like one cub being reared by humans does not
equate to a you know, full bore domestication of a species.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Yeah, just because you tame and pet one extinct gray
wolf doesn't mean all its kids are gonna be Uh,
what's a what's a funny dog breed?
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Oh? Well, you already said she'suu well and I said
labradoodle cockapoo sneuzer. Sure, Yeah, well, I mean I think
I get what you're putting down.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
Ben.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
The way evolution works is there has to be a
trait that becomes beneficial to the entire species entire, you know,
that allows them to flourish. And with man entering the equation,
it makes a lot of sense that over time, playing
nice with humans would be just that type of adaptation.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Yeah, yeah, just soon. That's a great point because if
you look at wolves today and you look at wolves
back then, they are relatively uniform in appearance, they are homogeneous.
The odds of a mutation appearing randomly in one wolf
in a captain population, even today, they're very small, and
(17:03):
it's winning the lottery four times in a row, probably
more in a row. To imagine a mutation that would
successfully breed through a population. So logically it would have
taken thousands or even millions of years to get the
diversity that we see in dogs. But if you look
(17:24):
at the fossil evidence, you'll see dogs appear pretty recently.
What we say forty thirty three thousand years ago. If
you fast forward to fifteen thousand years ago, you were
going to see unambiguously domesticated dogs, and Noel, they have
(17:50):
all the stuff that you were describing, right in the
bone structure, the changes in the snout, and perhaps even
more importantly, the changes in human interaction with those creatures.
Now we're seeing dogs buried with people. Now we're seeing
(18:11):
the you know, the beloved Fido shout out to our
Fido episode, you know, nestled up with an ancient human
and we also have modern evidence that shows us wild
wolves are different from dogs on a fundamental level. Like
you take a random dog, you take a random wolf,
(18:33):
they behave very differently.
Speaker 4 (18:34):
Right.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
There have been studies of wolf pups raised in captivity
that show that this would have been completely impractical. The
way that early humans live was pretty tough. I mean,
you know, there's no question about that. Survival was the
name of the game. So regardless of how much attention
or you know, love and care are given to these
(18:57):
wolf pups, the fact remains that they are wolves.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
Yeah, very much so, right, Like if you raise a
horse and you raise a zebra, you contame them both,
but only one could be domesticated. It's strange, and I
love that you're pointing out the time it would take
as a hunter gatherer to pay this focused attention to
this thing that will naturally bite you and will see
(19:24):
you as an ecological threat.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
So you got enough going on. You don't need that, nobody,
You don't need that drama.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
No, No, you're out hunting mammoths or whatever. You got.
You got bigger things to worry about. You're trying to
figure out wheels and fire. You know, you got a lot.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
Of projects one hundred percent. That's to say that you're
not going to purposefully keep around something that is not
benefiting you in some way. You know, this is like
very much a lean time where you travel light and
you definitely aren't keeping heck, human stragglers around. You know,
if people can't pull their weight in the hunting party,
they're probably not gonna make it either. So like having
(20:03):
a creature around that's nipping at your heels literally, or
you know the worst, actually biting you and drawing blood,
You're probably going to put an end to that real quick.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Yeah, can you trust this other entity that is not human?
Can you trust it to the point where you go
to sleep around it? The answer with dogs is yes.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
The answer with wolves is no, right, yeah, can you
have your infants around it? You know?
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Oh yeah, good point, because wolves are not really rule followers,
they're not into human rubric of behavior. This leads us
to the next question, which you so excellently foreshadowed. What
if some wolves effectively domesticated themselves.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
Because they saw a benefit to running with the humans.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Yeah, it's a theory we find in works like Dogs
a startling new understanding of Cadine origin behavior. And Evolution
by Raymond and Lorna Coppinger.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
Their Eyebrows stuff.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
It's it's a pretty great read. It's kind of controversial,
but it's one example of this argument. It suggests that
when humans moved from a mobile hunter gatherer society to
agriculture to a sedentary lifestyle where you had to stick
around and make sure crops made it from one season
(21:33):
to the next, their argument is that in doing so,
humans created a new parking spot, a new ecological niche
for the wolves in the area.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Well, it's just like you know in any situation, Like
I think it's Maslow's hierarchy of needs that once certain
certain needs are required to be met, shelter, food, et cetera,
once those needs are easier to meet, you kind of
open up the ability to focus on things like leisure
and perhaps companionship from a critter.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Yeah right, I love that you're bringing in Maslow. There,
we see that what likely happened is some of these
early wolves may have built a tolerance to the presence
of humans, and they at some point realize, look, if
you see humans around, they litter, they leave a lot
(22:25):
of leftovers, they leave a lot of trash. So we
can go to the human camp just like one of
those weird folks at a fish festival. Groundcourse is that
what they're called is they're called groundcour called.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
Ground where's the ground score? It's anything that you find
on the ground that a festival. Typically you'd be looking
for drugs, but it can be anything that could be
you know something, you love it, I love it. So
the wolves figure out how to groundscore.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
What a perfect term.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
And then they also evolved the well, they didn't really
evolve at this point. They sort of migrated their skill set.
The stuff they used for their wolf packs, they figured
out they could do the same thing for their new
human packs.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Well, there was a new situation that presents itself. And
it's a whole act of a lot easier to you know,
non a nice juicy bone that still has some meat
on it than it is to stalk and hunt and
kill your prey. Not to mention if human's presence and
their advantage in hunting is maybe thinning out the herd
for you a little bit.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
M that's a really good point. And perhaps, like so
many big changes, this happened in small steps. Uh, Max,
could you que us up some epic historical soundtrack.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
Brolicking good chap perfect.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Yeah, what's a way to it? Yeah, I like the
hand signals you're given there. All right, So picture this.
What if one of these ancient wolves long ago is
low in the pecking order of her own community, and
she decides to leave her pack and takes up a
life closer to a human community, like you were saying,
(24:18):
something with a more consistent source of food. And at
first she lives along the fringes, right, she hides.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
She's sort of like coming in like a thief in
the night and picking up these scraps. But then over time,
you know, perhaps the humans acknowledge the presence of the
wolf no longer as a threat. And the moment that
the humans stop immediately like killing these creatures on site,
but rather see them as a potential benefit, then there's
(24:47):
this kind of quid pro quote thing that emerges.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Yes, now look at this, they say, this one wolf
out of all these other wolves, it can smell better
than us, it can see better, it can hear better.
It warns us of predators. It also helps us find food.
It also guards you know, our little humans, human.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Ees like minimes. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Yeah, And eventually the humans also learn to tolerate this presence,
meaning that the descendants of our hypothetical she wolf reproduce
in like like around the humans. They grow tamer with
each generation. Sure, they eventually evolve more complicated behaviors like
(25:38):
guarding crops. That's another thing wolves do well, you know,
And it's funny.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
At the top of the show, I sort of mentioned
the idea of like sort of human assisted evolution. But
the more I think about it, like, that's just kind
of how evolution works. Humans are just another factor, you know,
that presents itself in evolution that over time become the
reason for an adapted trait that then, you know, over time,
(26:02):
with these generations of new pups being born among the humans,
that just sort of becomes an innate characteristic that is learned.
Is it a mutation though, because eventually long enough, I
guess the mutation does take place and their appearances begin
to change. The wolves, not the humans. Yeah, well humans
too a little bit. I mean, we certainly know that
(26:23):
early humans look different than what we know of is
more modern humans. But we certainly begin to see a
change in the physicality of what were once wolves and
are now starting to resemble much more closely what we
think of today as dogs.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Man, it's so wild to imagine sheep dogs, just sheep
dogs alone, working herding dogs. Their wolf ancestors would have
immediately killed the sheep, and now the dogs will go
on these honestly these action movie level mission to kill wolves.
(27:01):
There's that one guy I think we both saw who
just like killed eleven wolves and went and tracked them
down Liam Neeson style. Do you hear about this one?
Speaker 3 (27:10):
I don't think so, no Ah, He's a legend. Liam Neeson's.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
The dog version, the cade version, right, and you know,
shout out to you, Liam. If you're listening and you're thinking,
there still have the dog in me, well then we
got your back.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
I mean, but dogs definitely have a certain set of skills,
You're absolutely right, and those skills sort of develop over
time with further influence from their now human masters. I mean,
you know, like to your point, wolves would have immediately
eaten the sheep rather than helped the humans out, because
there's sort of a new I guess currency, because if
(27:47):
you hang with the humans, you're getting more consistently fed,
you're getting more consistently treated, you know, well, rather than
being out in the wild and fending for yourself. And
I know that's an oversimplify, but there is something to that.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
One hundred percent, you know, And it's perhaps one of
the most baffling differences, the idea that you could, as
a human society somehow impart the concept of rules, right
and object permanence upon this non human animal that could
(28:22):
you could say, Hey, I know we usually eat the sheep,
and don't worry, we are going to eat sheep later.
But for now, bro, I need you to just bark
if you see any wolves.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
Well, and it's just a long game, you know, trial
and error type situation, much like humans figuring out what
things would kill you if you ate them, or what
things were tasty and would give you sustenance. The same deal.
Like can you imagine the first person that decided to
try to train a more wolf like you know canine
probably didn't go well for quite a while. I you know,
(28:58):
I think about that a lot.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
I think they probably just threw scraps at a distance
and the dog, excuse me, the wolf on the way
to Doghood showed up. But I don't think there was
any petting. I don't think there were any belly scratches
for quite.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
Some time, and more modern psychology gave us sort of
a framework for understanding this, with things like the Pavlovian responses,
you know, and like being able to train the dog
with positive reinforcement. But they didn't have a name for
that then. It was literally just kind of making it
up as they went along until they got a result
that was desirable.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Great point. Yeah, we should also know at this juncture,
humans hadn't even figured out how to write stuff down.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
Exactly, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Yes, they were vibing, that's the way to put it.
And we may be romanticizing our she wolf situation a bit,
but we do know something like this had to have occurred.
Those gray wolves did eventually evolve into something like dogs,
and when they did those just like how we're saying
(30:08):
it's dangerous for the first human to try to hang
out with a wolf, it's dangerous for the first wolf
to try to hang out with a human, you know,
because historically, if you're a wolf and you see a
group of humans, you're not going to like howl at
the moon and then jump at them. You are going
to run away. And then after they leave, when you
(30:32):
can smell that they are gone. You were going to
run back to where they were and see if you
can eat any of their trash.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
Well, that's right, because I mean, you know, early on
in this relationship human and still today, there are wolves
that remain. And if you're in a sort of a
nomadic culture, or you're in sort of maybe some of
the more untamed parts of the world, you gotta shoot
wolves on site a lot of the time because they
represent a threat to your settlements, to your you know, community.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
Even places where it's illegal to do so, folks will
attempt to shoot wolves or poison them, or somehow murder
them because for them it is a direct, clear and
present threat. If you're a timid wolf, however, you don't
get in the human club because you're always running away.
(31:22):
So there's a Goldilock zone, as astronomers would call it.
The bolder ones are the ones who go up to
the edge of the firelight.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
And it's sort of what I was alluding to early
on when you talked about how there was a particular
group of gray wolves that were the sort of genesis
of what we think of today as dogs, and it
was something to do with their temperament they were a
little bolder, They were a little more curious, They were
a little more willing to check things out and not
(31:53):
immediately mall on site.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
Yes, yeah, they were not smash on site. They had
a little or vinegar with them. They were a family show.
So we're not going to use the other American idiom right.
One group of wolves we know split from the human
forest hunters. They went down a different evolutionary path. You
(32:17):
can find them now. This other group of wolves that
hung with the humans, they figured out quickly they didn't
have to be as fast nor as creative as their ancestors.
In fact, being slower was better. Being smaller was better
because smaller animals need less food. The main quality, and
(32:42):
we're still a natural selection here. The main quality these
individuals needed to have was a tolerance for humans.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
And would that group of the gray wolves that branched
off be what we would today refer to as Canus lupus.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Well, Canus lupus, yeah, this is you get to it
because the wolves that are alive now are not the
direct ancestors of the dogs that are alive now. Like
you're describing the pleastine, I believe it is pleastine wolves
that probably created dogs.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
They are extinct now and well, but what I'm saying
is that evolutionary split, the one that we know of
today as like that's a wolf, yes, is what we
would call canus lupus.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Yes, yeah, yeah, I believe that's correct. And during this split,
this is all taking a very long time, right, humans
are using I don't like using. They're working with these
primitive dogs to help hunt, to help protect the human
pack from bigger, madder predators. And at the same time,
(33:53):
as you mentioned earlier, dogs are using humans as a
consistent food source. Now, if you have never had to
live in the wild, congratulations. If you ever find yourself
in the woods with no help and no cell phone,
your biggest immediate concerns are going to be finding consistent
(34:15):
sources of water and food.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
And hopefully you get to league up with a white
fang type situation.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Right, yeah, of course, you know, dream big. This is
a mutually beneficial structure for the humans and the wolves
on the way to doghood. It's called commensal domestication. It's
a symbiosis of sorts. It's the same structure we see
in human canine relationships today. Like have you ever hung
(34:44):
out with a sheep dog.
Speaker 3 (34:45):
They're amazing.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
They love do it like they naturally love organizing stuff.
They're very type A.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
Absolutely No, I have not personally spent time with a
sheep dog, but I've seen Benji. Yes, yes, he's a
good boy the franchise. Yeah, stop hunting Benji seem pretty sharp,
is all I'm getting. He's super sharp. You nailed it.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
Our next question perhaps the billion dog tree question, know
where did this happen? Is it true that people still
don't agree.
Speaker 3 (35:24):
Yes, it's true, Like many things that occur over such
a massive timeline, some experts believe that this took place
for the first time in Europe, others in the Middle East,
others East Asia. Still not a particular consensus. You know,
as we've seen in many situations like this, there's probably
some truth to all of those. They probably there was
some parallel things going on. It just kind of seems
(35:48):
like that's pretty likely. But no, there is no scientific
consensus at this particular moment, though the Eurasian East Asian
origin story does seem to get the most support. So
this is a little bit more foreshadowing. We've alluded to
some potential plot twists coming, and we're about to get
to it.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
Yes, as the Cenabytes, I wanted to I wanted to
see if you would do this joke. As the cinabytes
used to say, put a pin in it for now,
it's a it's a hell raiser joke.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
They also used to say, we have such wonders to
show you, as we do as well, ridiculous historical wonders
to show you. You know, it's funny. Cinebyte is. The
more I think about it, the more it sounds like
sort of a dainty, you know, cinnamon roll thing. You
might get a cinnabon, you know, cinabytes please.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
Yeah, kind of like Buddy is naturally a name for
a dog instead of a human. Yeah, like Max, Max
is one of the most popular names for dogs.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
Borderline is a stand in the way that Fido is.
Max is making a face.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
We looked at the statistics Max and again that's We'll
get to the methodology later, maybe in part two.
Speaker 5 (37:01):
But Deal's voices now different.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Give me give me a give me a deeper voice,
give me.
Speaker 5 (37:08):
Higher than you're hired. Noel's the deep voice.
Speaker 4 (37:10):
Now I want to sound like Walter White. Okay, Apparently
there are these celebrity voice changer filters on Instagram now
Brave New World. Not necessarily in a good way, Max.
If you have any dog like qualities, they're all positive.
Speaker 6 (37:22):
Yeah, I would say, I'm a loyal person and I
don't do anything else, but just that, anything else dog.
Speaker 4 (37:29):
You also like pets and and a good walk the
good walkies.
Speaker 5 (37:32):
I do like a good walk that is true.
Speaker 7 (37:35):
So we have learned a little bit about a fraut relationship. Uh, Matt,
I'm not sure why you decided to take revenge on
us for the statistics about games. Is my voice not
the regular for a thing that is very much not
my fault your decision.
Speaker 5 (37:54):
No, you're the one who the brain statistics into this.
You could just ignore them like me.
Speaker 4 (37:59):
No, statistics are there to be fussed over and to
be pedantic with.
Speaker 5 (38:05):
Yes, exactly, I'm just kidding. Your voice is normal again?
Speaker 3 (38:08):
Oh great.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
When we try to figure out exactly when and how
domestication happened, we are seeing an interlocking set of mysteries.
And this is where you might say, Hey, go guys, Max,
Noel Ben, we as civilization, we know about DNA. Now,
surely we can just do some DNA testing a little
(38:32):
bit of forensic searching, and this will tell us where
and when and how wolves became dogs.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
Eh yeah, I mean it certainly hasn't stopped scientists from trying.
There are all sorts of advances in the research, but
the problem is, as is often the case, some of
this new information doesn't always provide answers so much as
it raises new questions and can yield to further modification
of the scientific data and less consensus between scientists.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
I like modification.
Speaker 3 (39:07):
That's great, that's great, so we know.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Oh let me correct myself here. It is a late Pleistocene,
not Pleacene. This extinct late Pleistocene gray wolf is the
nearest common ancestor to the dog, meaning modern wolves are
not the direct ancestral line. But secondly, we have to
(39:31):
go back to the idea of genetic divergence. So everything
we're learning about the DNA brings up that timeline question again.
And this is compounded or I'm gonna use it no,
because I love that phrase. It's modified by the fact
that dogs and wolves, just like horses and zebras, are
genetically close enough to reproduce with each other. They have
(39:55):
crossbread so often that, according to folks like Greg Larsen
at the University of Oxford. Their genes are a bowl
of soup.
Speaker 3 (40:05):
Yeah, I mean, it's sort of like what we think
of when we compare the DNA of humans and great apes.
But this is way closer than that, because I certainly
don't think anyone has ever suggested that humans and great
apes could could mate with one another with any level
of success.
Speaker 2 (40:20):
There's the human z thing, but again I guess that's
stuff they'll want.
Speaker 4 (40:24):
You to know.
Speaker 3 (40:26):
Definitely more the stuff of nightmares rather than interesting breeding choices. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
And there's a great article with Ed Yong, a journalist
over at The Atlantic, talking to Professor Larson, where he says,
you know, he goes, he goes tintoes down on this
soup analogy. He says, somebody goes, what ingredients we're added,
in what proportion and in what order to make that soup?
(40:53):
Meaning the long genetic story leading to Doghood. And he says,
the patterns we see could have been created by seventeen
different narrative scenarios. Shout out Jonathan, and we have no
way of discriminating between them. And this is where this
(41:14):
is where we see some amazing research nol Larsen teamed
up with other scientists human as far as we know,
and to figure out the answer from wolves to dogs.
He did what any good dog would do. He had
to search here over, He had to search for the
(41:35):
right bone. Ah, that was close. And what bone would
that be?
Speaker 3 (41:38):
Ben?
Speaker 2 (41:39):
Oh, it's called a petress. Here we can here, we
can play along at home. If you take your finger,
take any one of your pointer fingers you wish, and
you put it behind your ear sort of like mid
distance behind your ear. You might feel a bump. Do
we feel that bump?
Speaker 1 (41:59):
I do?
Speaker 3 (42:00):
Thankfully? Normal?
Speaker 2 (42:01):
Higher up? Yeah, yeah, okay, looking at Max, you got it.
That is your petrus bone. It's super dense, which means
it's fantastic for retaining DNA. If you try to pull
DNA out of most fossils, it's gonna be contaminated. It's
gonna be riddled with microbes and history. You'll get a
(42:22):
lot of DNA from a fossil, but they're a very
small percentage of it will come from.
Speaker 3 (42:28):
The I guess we should say the owner of the bone,
the creator of the bone, right, rather than the contamination
over time and a researcher named Dan Bradley of Trinity
College Dublin found the perfect specimen in Eastern Ireland's New Grange.
It's a forty eight hundred year old monument that actually
predates Stonehenge and the Pyramids of Giza. Pretty big deal,
(42:52):
very important site. Beneath it's a circular mound with you know,
massive networks underground chambers. Many animal bone fragments could be found,
and among those were the petress bone of a dog boom.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
Which means that if you can if you can extract
DNA from this petress bone, you will get as high
as eighty percent of the original bone owners DNA. This
is a burial site. It's super old. It's not necessarily
unique because, as we mentioned earlier, the careful, ritualistic interment
(43:36):
or burial of dogs. It's not forget the written word,
it's older than that. It's older than agriculture. People were
hanging out with, you know, their favorite doggo or their pooch,
way before they figured out how to grow crops on
a repeatable, reproducible basis. Dogs have been buried like humans
(43:59):
for thousands of years. They have been part of the
family since before humans figured out how to write. Family trees.
Speaker 3 (44:07):
Yeah, yeah, I mean you call a man's best friend
for no reason. Another important specimen found in Germany, the
famous bon Albercastle dog. Bon Obercastle dog shows signs of
some deterioration due to something called distemper, an advanced distemper
that suggested that it was cared for during a period
(44:28):
of illness. And another important specimen was found in Germany,
known as the bon Obercastle dog or hunt. It showed
signs of some physical deterioration due to a malady that
it was apparently stricken with. This dog something called distemper,
and it suggested some of the evidence on the bone
itself that it had been cared for during this time
(44:50):
of poorliness.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
Yeah, so someone said, oh no, bon Obercastle is sick.
He has a highly can tageous virus. And someone else
said what is a virus? And they said, never mind,
let's take care of our dog. This is, by the way,
similar to research that showed us how intelligent the Deanderthal
population was. They cared for their elderly. It's Another example
(45:18):
would be a dog found in Tunisia and a Roman
burial who was eighteen years old when they passed away. Yeah,
missing teeth, definitely had arthritis. These are just the things
we can know from bones, which means someone kept this
little guy around and loved him.
Speaker 3 (45:39):
Eighteen years old. The dog. The dog that's like, by
today's standards, an incredibly long life for a canine.
Speaker 2 (45:47):
Yeah, no kidding, and probably a hopefully a very well
lived life. If we look at this. We'll go back
to our buddy Larsen. He teams up with Laurent Frot
and they they take Bradley's research that petros bone in
New Grange and they say, okay, let's compare the DNA
(46:10):
from there to something like seven hundred modern dogs. Now,
let's try to build out a family tree. And they
found the tree they built again an all objective. It
had this obvious fork in its trunk. Sorry, that's just
a funny phrase.
Speaker 3 (46:29):
It is a funny thing.
Speaker 2 (46:30):
Yeah, it had this obvious fork in its trunk. There
seemed to be two different dog dynasties.
Speaker 3 (46:38):
Be Am I the only one that, upon hearing fork
in its trunk, I'm picturing like an elephant with two trunks.
Speaker 4 (46:43):
I don't know why.
Speaker 3 (46:44):
I'm just a silly guy.
Speaker 4 (46:45):
I like that.
Speaker 2 (46:46):
I pictured I pictured an episode of one of those
sort of copaganda law enforcement shows where they say, well,
the suspect did have a fork in their trunk.
Speaker 3 (46:57):
You mean like the murder weapon was a fork and
they found it in the trunk of their.
Speaker 2 (46:59):
Ca Well, we can't say anything until it goes to work.
Speaker 3 (47:03):
Okay, But back to the use of fork and it's
strunk for our purposes. One of these forks included all
the dogs from eastern Eurasia, like the Sharpei, which is
a delightful little sweetie, as well as Tibetan mastaves, which
are much more big bruiser dogs boys exactly the other one,
the other fork in said drunk, includes all of the
(47:24):
western Eurasian breeds and the New Grange dog.
Speaker 2 (47:30):
Which is the source of that original Petrus both. So
this leads Larsen to a fascinating hypothesis or fascinating piece
of speculation. We thought dogs were domesticated once, maybe thirty
something thousand years ago in Eurasia, but DNA seems to
(47:52):
indicate different populations of humans with little to no interaction
may have independent domesticated canines, not once, but multiple times.
Parallel thinking. As said earlier, it makes sense because a
good idea is a good.
Speaker 3 (48:09):
Idea absolutely, and the team responsible for this research also
calculated that the two dog dynasties we're talking about here
split from each other between somewhere around sixty four hundred
and fourteen thousand years ago. Another pretty big swath, but
the oldest dog fossils. Dog fossil be a great name
for a band, By the way, some sort of like
(48:29):
metalcore band are older even than that, which means that
when those Eastern dogs migrated west into Europe, there were
already dogs waiting on them there to buddy.
Speaker 2 (48:40):
Up and to larsen, this only makes sense if dogs
were domesticated more than once. To be clear, this is
not one hundred percent accepted by the scientific world at large,
but it's a pretty great guess. Again, it goes down
to the timing. Dogs may have been maybe domesticated just
(49:02):
the one time, split into other populations before the dawn
of history or recorded history, or they may have been
a great idea for various human communities at various points
in time and across the planet. All we know for
sure is that they were definitely domesticated in the ancient
(49:23):
ancient past, and they were probably the first animals to
experience the profound change we call domestication today, and domestication
is sometimes a misleading term or misunderstood. You could argue,
it's not a one way push, it is a two
(49:43):
way streaked it is a.
Speaker 3 (49:45):
Four kid trunk. No, it's a little different. Didn't quite
land so similar to some of our discussions on other
podcasts with our buddy Matt Frederick, stuff they don't want
you to know. We do have to ask or are
left with the question, what if those ancient wolves also
domesticated us? Dun, dun, dun. I've been made along the
(50:05):
way to answer this and other questions. We're going to
have to take a break here and start a new
episode entirely on domestication. Ben, there's a lot to discuss.
I know we've been teasing that. I'm so excited about
getting into some of the minutia of what domestication means
because I learned a lot about this concept that I
think is often misunderstood.
Speaker 2 (50:26):
Agreed, and we can't wait for you to join us.
Ridiculous historians learn about domestications. Send us your dog picks,
explore this with us. We're huge, huge fans of all
things K nine. We're also big fans of you and
you know who else. We're big fans of Noel, our
super producer, mister Max Williams. You can also find your
(50:50):
faithful correspondence on social needs. Should thou ship Noel? Where
can people find you?
Speaker 3 (50:58):
Yeah? You can find me pretty exclusively on Instagram, where
I exist at the handle how now Noel Brown, Ben Bollan,
I think I know yours?
Speaker 2 (51:06):
Yes, in a burst of creativity, I can be found
calling myself at Ben Bullen on Instagram, at the game
downt that down at the A lot of good folks
died at benbullin hsw on Twitter, or at the website
Benbollan dot com.
Speaker 3 (51:22):
Big big thanks, of.
Speaker 2 (51:22):
Course to Alex Williams who composed this bang in track.
Speaker 3 (51:26):
I love it everything no same man. I was gonna
throw the Max see if he wanted to shout out
any of his social medis, but apparently he's He's gone
scorched earth with that.
Speaker 6 (51:36):
I've left everything. Twitter was the last one that went,
and when it changed to X I try to stay around,
but I just constantly was getting emails saying someone's trying
to access your your accounts.
Speaker 5 (51:46):
You know what, I'm done?
Speaker 3 (51:47):
Goodbye.
Speaker 2 (51:48):
You'll have to find Max's Cats Twitter. In the meantime,
Please remember we are nothing if not open to discourse,
and that's why we always like to recommend our complaint department.
Please contact us directly twenty four hours a day, seven
days a week, every day of the year, at Jonathan
(52:10):
Strickland at iHeartMedia dot com.
Speaker 3 (52:13):
Indeed, he loves to hear from you, and you know what,
we'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Monster: BTK
'Monster: BTK', the newest installment in the 'Monster' franchise, reveals the true story of the Wichita, Kansas serial killer who murdered at least 10 people between 1974 and 1991. Known by the moniker, BTK – Bind Torture Kill, his notoriety was bolstered by the taunting letters he sent to police, and the chilling phone calls he made to media outlets. BTK's identity was finally revealed in 2005 to the shock of his family, his community, and the world. He was the serial killer next door. From Tenderfoot TV & iHeartPodcasts, this is 'Monster: BTK'.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.