The following is an excerpt from the introduction to “More than a Pet,” Archaeology Southwest Magazine Volume 37, number 2—coming very soon!
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R. E. Burrillo, Issue Guest Editor and Archaeology Southwest Research Associate
Audio version of “More than a Pet, New Magazine Sneak Peek” written and read by R. E. Burrillo.
(January 27, 2026)—Throw a stick for a dog, and chances are, the dog will excitedly wag its tail, charge off at a gallop, and return with the stick in its mouth. Throw a stick for a wolf, and it will look at you quizzically before trotting off to do wolf things.
How the latter ever became the former is a subject of much contemplation. For most of the shared history of human beings and wolves, they were primarily competitors. Anatomically modern humans arrived in Europe by about 50,000 years ago to find a variety of wolf species, including now extinct megafaunal, or dire, wolves that had long since adapted to the continent, being almost as versatile as humans themselves. They were not confined to narrow ecological niches like a lot of other apex predators, and although not quite as adaptable as coyotes, to whom we’ll return later in the issue, wolves could adjust and thrive just about anywhere.
Despite popular misconceptions, domesticated dogs are not actually descended from any currently known wolf species, according to genetic studies conducted within the last decade. The presence of dog and gray wolf DNA on either side of the divide is a result of interbreeding between the species. Huskies, for example, have a lot of wolf DNA in them, and gray wolves with black coats get those coats from dogs.
Instead, gray wolves and today’s dogs share a common ancestor, something more like a wolfish dog or a doggish wolf that has since gone extinct. Either way, most researchers now put dog domestication no later than approximately 30,000 years ago, or between about 10- and 20,000 years after the dispersal of modern humans into Europe.
After that, people and dogs went everywhere together, beginning about 15,000 thousand years ago. We have evidence of dogs that were lovingly interred either by themselves or by their owners. Dogs also play a variety of roles in human lives, individually and culturally, and have done so all along.
