The photo of a Tundra Wolf first appeard in BC Outdoors, April, 1985. An abbreviated version of this post was published as a Letter to the Editor in the November/December 2010 issue of Archaeology.
In the September/October 2010 issue of Archaeology is an article, "More than Man’s Best Friend,” that summarizes theories about how dogs' domestication began. All dogs descended from wolves, although the exact location and hence subspecies of wolf is in doubt: some evidence points to China and some to the Middle East. One of these ideas is that wolves evolved as scavengers, hanging around human camps. Anyone who has lived in wolf country as I have would find this untenable. Wolves don't scavenge, unless they're starving, or if they opportunistically stumble upon another predator's kill. And human camps don't usually leave enough meaty refuse to attract a wolf, although they often visit camps out of curiosity. A hunting camp is a different matter: a large mammal carcass would attract a wolf; but humans have been using tools to clean meat from bones for more than 2 million years, and by about 15,000 years ago, when the first unequivocal dogs appear in the archaeological record, humans were very efficient at cleaning up the bones and extracting the marrow. The leftovers would not feed even one wolf, let alone a pack. Human settlements leave enough refuse; but these only appear about 10,000, just before agriculture.
Moreover, anyone who thinks the first dogs evolved as camp-periphery scavengers hasn’t spent enough time sleeping on bare ground where large carnivores might eat you. They can’t know the terror one feels upon hearing heavy footsteps in the dark after the campfire has died; nor can they realize how easy it is to obtain wolf pups. I have many times heard such footsteps and wished I had brought my dog, and later found grizzly bear or other predator prints. Once the footsteps stopped only a few meters away, and stayed. I lay petrified until the first light of dawn revealed a mountain lion watching me. In the Canadian Arctic and Boreal Forest, where I have worked as a biologist, hunted, and camped with Dene and Inuit and hunters and families for many years, every hunter finds wolf dens and many bring home the pups for the kids to play with. I’m too large to crawl into the wolf dens I have found, but the more lightly-built Dene hunters often can. It would not take long—about one night—for a family to realize how good a sentry the wolf can be. If it is a bitch that they have tamed, she’ll likely be bred by a wild wolf. It is not a great leap to think that the family will keep the most docile of the brood. From there to dogs is a short chain. In the Middle East, one of the places posited for dogs’ first progenitors, even into the last century there were wolves, lions, leopards, brown bears, striped hyenas, and wild boar, all of which can kill sleeping humans. After dogs were domesticated, sure, some no doubt became camp scavengers, but I feel in my bones, where terror lives, that they began as pets and sentries.
Absolutely, Lee. My guess, though, is we didn't capture wolf cubs and tamed them so much (although that would have happened) but rather than we began hunting with and eventually living with some wolves. I think they learned to "read" humans before they joined up with us.
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