First dogs may have originated in S. China

By Chen Xia
0 Comment(s)Print E-mail China.org.cn, April 26, 2016
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The Chow is a dog breed originally from northern China. It is one of the few ancient dog breeds still in existence in the world today.

The Chow is a dog breed originally from northern China. It is one of the few ancient dog breeds still in existence in the world today.

Dogs may have originated in south China some 33,000 years ago, according to an article recently published on American scientific journal PNAS.

A research team at the Kunming Institute of Zoology affiliated to the Chinese Academy of Sciences analyzed genetic data from domestic dogs in south China and discovered that south China is more likely to be the origin place of dogs than Nepal and Mongolia, as was previously believed.

The researchers suggested that about 33,000 years ago, wolves in the southern part of East Asia were attracted to scraps of food near human habitations. As wolves grew closer to human beings, they were domesticated and became the first dogs.

It's yet unknown where exactly dogs originated in south China, but the researchers have collected over 1,000 gene samples and are working on an answer. The Yangtze River drainage area, the Pearl River drainage area and the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau are all possible places of origin.

Dogs then travelled from East Asia to Europe with human beings, the researchers said. But it's unknown whether they travelled along the Silk Road or by sea. "The migration of dogs must be accompanied by the migration of human beings, because when dogs became domesticated, they were no longer able to survive on their own in the wild," said Wang Guodong, the team's leading researcher.

The Chinese researchers published their theory on PNAS on April 20, challenging previous research conducted by Laura M. Shannon from Cornell University, who believes that dogs originated in Central Asia.

The origin and domestication of dogs have been in dispute for a longtime. There are more than 400 dog breeds in the world, including the Chow, which has existed for more than 2,000 years, and the German Shepherd Dog, which has a history of less than 200 years.

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