Humans and wolves in Southern Europe during the Late Pleistocene: paleogenomic evidence about dog domestication dynamics

The domestication of plants and animals is undoubtedly considered as one of the major human cultural innovations like the manufacture of tools, the conquest of fire, or the evolution of verbal language. Domestication resulted in a crucial shift in human subsistence patterns, from nomadic hunter-gatherers to a sedentary agricultural lifestyle, which led to the development of complex societies. In this context, dog domestication represents one of the most fascinating and unresolved events in the history of the humankind. As first event of domestication, the origin of dogs goes back to the ancient coevolution established between Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers and wolves. However, the number of domestication events, as well as their geographical location, ecological context and timing are still highly debated. In Europe, especially in the South, which hosted a patchwork of glacial refugia during the Last Glacial Maximum, almost no data are available on the genetic diversity of wolves prior to their domestication, on how they affected the early dog DNA variability. Therefore, to fill such gap of information, in this study, performed within the project “FIDO - Following Dog Domestication Origin and dynamics”, we applied cutting-edge methodologies for the analysis of complete mitogenomes of 15 Late Pleistocene wolves and 15 Bronze Age dogs collected in Italian archaeological sites. Results provided an overview of the temporal patterns of the Italian wolf population dynamics, and they were discussed in the light of paleogenomic data of human populations, with the aim to contribute to disentangle the dog domestication issue.