[Translation] Ancient DNA reveals that humans had dogs before the advent of agriculture

In the last days of the last Ice Age, when people still hunted with spears and used cave walls as canvases, new fashion trend.

About 14,000 years ago, hunter-gatherer societies across Europe discovered dogs, scientists report in two new paperspublished Wednesday in the journal Nature. The research provides the first definitive genetic evidence that dogs existed during the Paleolithic period, before humans developed agriculture.

Researchers using multiple techniques to analyze DNA extracted from ancient canid specimens have identified Paleolithic dogs at five different archaeological sites in Europe and western Asia. The oldest of these dogs lived about 15,800 years ago, which pushes the oldest known genetic evidence of dogs back nearly 5,000 years.