NICHOLAS WADE “New Finding Puts Origins of Dogs in Middle East” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/18/science/18dogs.html
犬の起源は中東における狼の家畜化。
最後のセンテンスで言及されている「犬のような死体（doglike remains）」とは犬以前、つまり狼ということ？
A research team led by Bridgett M. vonHoldt and Robert K. Wayne of the University of California, Los Angeles, has analyzed a large collection of wolf and dog genomes from around the world. Scanning for similar runs of DNA, the researchers found that the Middle East was where wolf and dog genomes were most similar, although there was another area of overlap between East Asian wolves and dogs. Wolves were probably first domesticated in the Middle East, but after dogs had spread to East Asia there was a crossbreeding that injected more wolf genes into the dog genome, the researchers conclude in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature.The archaeological evidence supports this idea, since some of the earliest dog remains have been found in the Middle East, dating from 12,000 years ago. The only earlier doglike remains occur in Belgium, at a site 31,000 years old, and in western Russia from 15,000 years ago.
数年前に犬の起源は中国かというニュースを読んだことがあるのだが、東亜細亜起源説の学者の意見；
最後に、犬を飼うことの人間社会形成に対する影響。特に、「相続」や「所有権」という観念（制度）の形成に対する影響。こちらの方が興味深い；
An earlier survey of dog origins, based on a small genetic element known as mitochondrial DNA, concluded that dogs had been domesticated, probably just once, in East Asia. The author of the survey, Peter Savolainen of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, said he was not convinced by the new report for several reasons, including that it did not sample dogs in East Asia from south of the Yangtze, the region where the diversity of mitochondrial DNA is highest. Also archaeologists in China have been less interested in distinguishing dog and wolf remains, he said.
Dog domestication and human settlement occurred at the same time, some 15,000 years ago, raising the possibility that dogs may have had a complex impact on the structure of human society. Dogs could have been the sentries that let hunter gatherers settle without fear of surprise attack. They may also have been the first major item of inherited wealth, preceding cattle, and so could have laid the foundations for the gradations of wealth and social hierarchy that differentiated settled groups from the egalitarianism of their hunter-gatherer predecessors. Notions of inheritance and ownership, Dr. Driscoll*1 said, may have been prompted by the first dogs to permeate human society, laying an unexpected track from wolf to wealth.
*1:Carlos Driscoll。彼は中東派。
