Tristan (4:23)

Selina, William, it is great to have you both on the podcast. Welcome to the show.

Dr. Selina Brace (4:28)

Thanks for inviting us. It's lovely to be here.

Dr. William Marsh (4:30)

Yeah, thanks Tristan. Thanks having us.

Tristan (4:32)

You guys are more than welcome, especially for this. It feels like a breaking news story. The fact that Britain's oldest dog, or should we say earliest known dog, is some 15,000 years old. Selena, it's great.

Dr. Selina Brace (4:45)

I think that definitely constitutes as an exceptionally good work day when you realize that we've managed to sequence Britain's oldest dog, that's for sure.

Tristan (4:54)

And how much of a surprise was it to make this discovery?

Dr. Selina Brace (4:58)

Well, kind of yes and no. Yes, it's always a surprise. You know, we're working with ancient fragmented DNA, so we're always relieved when it works, when you get a result. But should we have been surprised? Well, we've been working on the site for a number of years, so we know that the DNA actually has very good preservation there and we've also known that it was quite likely that dogs existed there. So the clues were already there, but it took a little while for the genetics and the genetic capabilities to catch up. So, yeah, for everything to align as well as it did. Yeah, that's always a good surprise.

Dr. William Marsh (5:34)

I remember vividly the moment when I saw the initial DNA results and I think it was an expletive ridden response to seeing the fact that, yes, we had, first of all, very, very good DNA preservation from a specimen, but secondly that it was a dog. Because there's been lots of academic focus on Gough's Cave, the site over the last sort of 3040 years. And this particular specimen was sampled back in the early 2000s for DNA analysis. But our methods were so unadvanced at that point, it just didn't work. And then in 2010, we had some other colleagues of a museum looked at it, looked at the morphology of it and found that it was very, very small compared to other wolves. And Vade, in a very, very niche text, said, perhaps this is an example of a domestic dog. But the only true sort of empirical way to know this is through DNA analysis. And we did a DNA analysis in 2023, 2024, as part of my PhD. And yeah, it's all come from there, really.

Tristan (6:38)

I also love this story because William and Celina, I've met you both before. We've done stuff on this site, Gough's Cave, that we're going to get into in a bit, but it's a lovely story how, Selina, I've done interviews with you in the past. You are such an expert in the DNA field, whether it's Cheddar man, skeletons at Stonehenge and so on. And William, of course, you know, this is your PhD and you've got a background in it as well. To see you both working together on this project is lovely. So you guys, you guys are quite a team and making these discoveries.

Dr. Selina Brace (7:06)

Yeah, we've been really lucky to work together for a number of years now. So getting to work on Goth Caves for so long is. Is been incredibly special.

Dr. William Marsh (7:15)

Yeah. I first heard about ancient DNA, the field, from a talk which Selena gave to me in 2019, and from there we've been tired of a hip really, and I think, get rid of me now.

Tristan (7:31)

I also think in today's age, the fact that the first words out of your mouth was an expletive and not a eureka or a blimey or golly, I think that emphasizes once again just the significance of the discovery, because I think you're quite right. Have an expletive is the first word,

Dr. William Marsh (7:45)

maybe tells you more about me as a person, perhaps.

Tristan (7:49)

So, Selina, we've mentioned it already now, Gough's Cave. So what is this location that, as you've already mentioned, you know, people have known a lot about it for quite some time.

Dr. Selina Brace (8:00)

Yeah, yeah. So although we first saw the dog in the NHM collections, the dog was initially found in Gough's Cave in Cheddar George in Somerset. So, as I've said, we've worked on Cheddar Gorge for a number of years now. It's an amazing site. It's a limestone cave that People can go and visit, go and see. It's got these amazing stalagmites, but it's also been, as you mentioned, an absolute treasure trove for significant archaeological finds over the years. So the cave itself, or the particular assemblage, the group of bones and material that we're talking about now, where this dog has been found, dates to around the period of around 15,000 years. So this is a period of climate warming. So this is after the end of the last Ice Age. So when Britain would have been covered by ice sheets at this point, at 15,000 years, the ice sheets would have been retreating and plants and animals would have been recolonizing Britain and humans also returning at this time point. And they would have been occupying this cave probably as kind of seasonal. It wasn't like they necessarily lived there. It was more like people were going to the cave year as a seasonal thing, either perhaps to meet or for feasts. We don't know exactly, of course, but they were certainly occupying this cave at different periods during this time, 15,000 years ago.

Tristan (9:28)

And is this a time period then? So after one of the coldest periods in Ice Age history, the last glacial maximum, a period when it's believed that humans left Britain altogether, but at some 15,000 years ago. So around that time is evidence of small groups of humans coming back. And a site like Gough's Cave is one of the greatest cave sites in the area, maybe even in southern Britain, where people can live for small amounts of time.

Dr. William Marsh (9:54)

Yeah, I would say so. So at around 20,000 years, which is when glaciation was at its peak, human and faunal animal populations, plant populations, couldn't inhabit these northern latitudes. So I think it's like the whole of Denmark from, like, north of maybe Birmingham, was all covered in ice sheets, and for another 200, 300 miles south, we'd all been completely uninhabitable. So human populations were restricted to these glacial refuges in two main glacial refuges in Europe at the time. One was sort of the Italy, Balkans region, and one was in southern France and northern Spain. And these individuals who we find at Gough's cave are called the Magdalenian, and they stem from this refugia in southern France and northern Spain. So essentially, as the ice sheets retreated, these groups of small hunter gatherers, dependent on hunting terrestrial fauna. So wild horses, reindeer, things like that, bear prey, essentially would have been moving northwards and they would have been tracking the prey northwards. And we see an increase of these Magdalenian sites across northern Europe, across Germany, across Poland, between about 18 and 15,000. But the one at the assemblage at Gough's Cave is one of the largest and one of the most rich in terms of not only human remains, but also artifacts and lithic technologies. And we have this incredible funerary behavior of funerary cannibalism. So rather than burying their dead, as we might do, or cremate their dead, they were eating. Eating their dead.

Tristan (11:33)

All right, don't reveal too much too quickly there, William. We're going to get to that, especially with the story, but I've jumped ahead. No, you have not. You have teased what is to come with the story. But it's a fascinating example, isn't it, of humans coming back of living in these caves. An amazing glimpse into life in Britain in. In the last few thousand years of the Ice Age. So let's go to the dog remains. Selina, how much of the dog was discovered? How many remains do you have? Or did you guys have to learn to make this research?

Dr. Selina Brace (12:05)

Okay, so there is an awful lot of fragmentary bone material at this site. There's loads of animal bone and remains, and many of these can't actually even be morphologically identified. So we know that there's a lot of different. So canid remains. So these could be morphologically identified as belonging to the canid family, so either dog or wolf. But the particular sample that we're talking about today, the one that we've done all this genetic work on, is actually a mandible. So this is the dog's lower jaw, and it was complete also with teeth. So the dog mandible was found as part of this Paleolithic assemblage. So these human remains, but these animal reins and lithics or tools that we know come from this Paleolithic period. They found this undisturbed sediment that had been protected by a fallen block near the cave entrance. And it's within this material that this mandible was found and had then been donated to the Natural History Museum. So it's a cave that is a site and an assemblage that contains lots of different types of material, so human and animal.

Tristan (13:18)

And so you have the remains of this dog. You have the mandible. And you mentioned earlier how, with advancements in technology, that we're able to learn more about it and DNA and so on. So, William, what methods did you guys have to garner as much information as possible from this mandible with teeth on it as well?

Dr. William Marsh (13:38)

So we had sort of three main bimolecular methods. Is what we call them. So the first is obviously ancient DNA, which is what Selina and I specialize in. We also have perhaps the most important method, which is radiocarbon dating. So this is looking. This is measuring the isotopic value of carbon 14 in the collagen. And essentially, once the individual is deposited, the carbon 14 is an radioactive isotope, so it begins to degrade, so it has a half life. I think it's of like 720 years or something like that. So essentially you can track the proportion of carbon 14 to carbon 13 and that tells you the age. You can predict the age of an element. And we did that for this mandible at Gough's Cave, and it came out as about 14 and a half thousand years old, which is very similar or almost completely identical, let's say, to all the human remains, which had also been sampled for radiocarbon dating and also some faunal remains. So we have a very, very tight sort of age range from about 15.1 thousand years ago to 14.2 thousand years ago, where we know that these Magellanian groups were using Gough's Cave and alongside. The third method is called dietary isotope analysis. So this gives you an insight into what humans and dogs were eating based on their carbon and nitrogen values.

Tristan (15:05)

I must ask, because I saw these words in your paper and they just intrigued me. Selina, how do the words nuclear genome data fit into this?

Dr. Selina Brace (15:15)

Okay, so nuclear genome data, this is basically the DNA. This is the DNA not of the mitochondrial genome, which is a very small genome, but the nuclear DNA is basically your DNA instruction manual. It's what tells the cells to make either a person, a person or in this case, dog, a dog. So it gives you the. It gives all dogs the same characteristics that makes them dogs, but it's also what makes a Great Dane different from a poodle. And every spaniel diff. Sort of slightly different from every other spaniel, if you know what I mean. It's the bits that make you the same and it's the bits that make you different all encoded in our nuclear DNA.

Tristan (15:56)

And so as we go on to a bit more about the dog itself, one last question on the context. You mentioned how obviously this dog, mandible, was not found in isolation. These other remains, human and faunal, dating to around 15,000 years ago in Gough's Cave. Just to summarize, so we have the best possible context, the best possible idea of how many different types of remains we have alongside the dog. Can you explain to us, Selena, what we do have from Gough's cave? From some 15,000 years ago alongside this mandible.

Dr. Selina Brace (16:26)

Yeah, so there are a lot of other bones at this site. So we have both herbivores and carnivores. So these include things like red deer, horse and auroch, which is like a large extinct cattle. And these remains have often been butchered by humans. So you see signs of cut marks and defleshing. There's also human artifacts at this site. So we have things such as perforated batons, which are these like deer antlers with like holes in them. And you have needles, you have knapping tools. So these are the things that people use to like shape stone. And of course we have a really cool engraved human arm bone. This engraved is beautifully artistically engraved with this zigzag pattern. Very, very cool. But of course we also have these, these human remains at the site as well. And the human remains are highly fragmented. We have over 200 small fragments of people. But perhaps what's most exciting about or most interesting about these people is that most of them have signs of post mortem human modification. So these are, this is our way of saying it looks like these people were cannibalized. O so for the faint hearted amongst us, you know, block your ears now. But we do see that they have cut marks, they have human teeth marks, chew marks, scraping marks. So yeah, very clearly these are the remains of people who have been eaten by other people. But we also find these very cool cranial vaults. So this is where the skull caps have been very carefully removed and modified into what have been interpreted as like skull cups or sort of skullcups. So these were found alongside the animal remains and of course what we now know to be a dog.

Dr. William Marsh (18:22)

And we see examples, although Gos cave is exceptional in how large it is in terms of the amount of material which we have lithics, faunal remains, human remains. You actually see other examples of this, of these cannibalistic behaviors across the Magdalenian across Europe. So I think there's 13 sites where you see this cannibalism, six which have skull cups. So it shows that Gough's cave was obviously a unique site in itself, but also linked to the sort of wider population across continental Europe at the time.

Tristan (18:56)

And just to clarify that, because you mentioned it earlier as well, William, so when we say lithic, do we mean kind of stone tool technology?

Dr. William Marsh (19:02)

Yeah, stone tool technologies. And these stone tools technologies would be sort of, although unique is probably not the right word, but idiosyncratic of the Magdalenians. So Magdalens would have their own sort of type of lithic or stone tool technologies compared to other hunter gatherer groups, other hunter gatherer cultures of the same period. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend.

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Tristan (21:21)

So let's get on to the dog itself. William, when you were doing this research alongside Selena, how did you find out that this mandible belonged to a dog and not a wolf? Because surely that is quite difficult to to distinguish between the two and the bones when the remains are some 15,000 years old.

Dr. William Marsh (21:40)

Yeah, it was pretty tricky, to be honest. And what we had to do is essentially drill a hole in the bone, get some bone powder, extract the DNA from its bone powder, and then sequence it. Some very, very large and expensive DNA sequencing machines. The thing about ancient DNA is that it's very, very fragmented. So if I was to take a drop of your blood, Tristan, now, it would have more DNA in it than probably 500 samples at the Natural History Museum. And not only would that you would have more of it, more of your own DNA, but also it would be very, very long compared to the ancient DNA in these samples. Because as when an individual dies, the DNA begins to break down, gets very, very shorter and gets more and more damaged. So that's what we're having to deal with when we're talking about ancient DNA. Because it's 15,000 years ago, that degradation has occurred for a very, very long period. So, yes, we had to do a lot of very specialist lab methods, draw out these very, very small DNA fragments. But once we had the DNA, once we had enough of the DNA, it's actually fairly straightforward to run the analyses. Because gray wolves, which is the wild version of a dog, essentially all dogs derive from a gray wolf population. They are genetically very, very distinct from a dog population. So once you have the DNA, you can run a very, very simple test, essentially comparing the DNA of, of our sample with a modern dog and a modern wolf. And in our case, our sample was far more similar to the dog than it was to the gray wolf. And at that point it was the. That was the eureka moment.

Tristan (23:15)

Selina, am I correct that, I mean, do we know much about wolves 15,000 years ago as well? Am I correct that there is also a wolf discovered in Gough's cave alongside the dog?

Dr. Selina Brace (23:25)

Yes, so there were wolves also around at this time point. And as I said, we have lots of fragmentary canid remains at the Goss Cave site, even within this assemblage. So we have looked at several of those to see if we could identify genetically more dogs from the site. There is a tantalizingly so that there is another dog there, but the DNA isn't as well preserved. But we can definitely say that one of the other canid remains that we looked at is in fact a wolf. So. Yeah, so morphologically, the less amount of material that you find, the harder it is to distinguish between the two just by looking at the bones. Because, of course, you're just looking at the size and if you don't have a big enough fragment, you can't tell. And that's where the DNA comes in. Because I would say, you know, what is amazing is that, yes, there's all these millions of parts of the genome that look different in dogs and wolves. And if you look at dogs and wolves today, they are different species. So, yes, of course you'd expect these millions of things, but the fact that we see these in this dog from 15,000 years ago, it's amazing that that's still the case, you know, it's brilliant. Yeah, really cool.

Dr. William Marsh (24:39)

One might think we were. So we're getting closer and closer to the time dogs were domesticated. One might think at this point, dogs and wolves were genetically more similar, but not really. We see the same distinction 15,000 years ago as we do today between dogs and. Between dogs and wolves, which is quite remarkable.

Dr. Selina Brace (24:59)

Yeah, I completely agree. It's just. It's quite. It's just amazing. They are actually already that different. So, you know, to put it into another context, what it means is these Paleolithic dogs are already more similar to modern dogs, you know, Fido at home, than they are to these ancient wolves from the same time. That kind of like blew my mind, to be honest. Yeah, it's crazy.

Tristan (25:23)

I mean, this is what I was wanting us to get towards was the fact that if you've got a wolf, evidence of a wolf at Gough's Cave at the same time that you've got evidence of a dog in these humans populations to try and get in my mind how similar this Ice Age dog and that Ice Age wolf would have been, how distinguishable they would have been to these human peoples at that time. But from what you guys are saying, actually, yes, there would have been clear differences between the two.

Dr. William Marsh (25:45)

Yeah. But it's hard to know what the dog would have looked like. Probably very, very similar to wolf, but behaviorally, it probably would have been behaving in a very, very different manner to the wolf.

Dr. Selina Brace (25:56)

I hope it was behaving differently, William, otherwise they might have had a bit

Dr. William Marsh (25:59)

of a problem here. You would have already seen this. Yeah. Genetically divergence, not much breeding between gray wolf and dog populations, but perhaps the greatest barrier to gene flow. So this is breeding between the two species would have been the dogs association with these humans. Essentially such a strong barrier that if a dog was to mate with a gray wolf, it's highly likely that that hybrid individual would have A, been probably too aggressive to be associated with the humans at the time, but B, also not be accepted within the gray wolf populations, within the gray wolf pack. So would have almost certainly not have reproduced. And it's that really strong barrier to genetic drift, which probably what initially caused that divergence between wolves and dogs. But going back to something which Selena says a little bit more off topic here, there's been so many claims of dogs in the Paleolithic, usually based on morphology. So I think that one of the earliest claims was 36,000 years ago from a site in Goyer Cave. So this is a site in Belgium. And these researchers were completely convinced that this canid was a dog based on morphology, based on its deposition environment. But our collaborators over at Oxford did the DNA on it. It turns out it's just an extinct population of gray wolves. It's very wolfy. And there are 10 or 12 examples of more recent, so 36, 32, 30,000, 28,000 of these dogs, which, when you do the D analysis, they just come out with the wolves. They are essentially wolves. So actually finding a dog this old has been tried many, many times before and we were very fortunate to be the first people to actually have cracked it.

Tristan (27:51)

I'm sorry to go a bit into theory here now, because I think this is probably something that we can't figure out even from the surviving evidence. But could we assume then, like the dog with the people at Gough's Cave was obviously a dog that lived with the people, you know, wasn't too aggressive with them, was part of almost. We could think the community like, like a modern dog. But the wolf at Gough's Cave, although dating to a similar time period, just what we know from, you know, behaviorally and DNA and the fact that it's a wolf was this clearly, you know, this was a wild animal. This could have been hunted by the human population or it could have just been living at the cave at a different time. It wouldn't have been part of that small human group. Selina.

Dr. Selina Brace (28:32)

Yeah, that's correct. I think that's the assumption that we would make from this. I mean, you did not see signs of modification of the wolf. So the wolf, sorry, has not been butchered. The wolf, we see no signs of any kind of modification in that way. And also, as we say, this is. The people at Golf Cave were likely occupying the cave seasonally. They weren't there all the time. So it's more likely perhaps that this wolf was coming in even at a completely different time point to the, to the humans, we can't say for sure. Obviously, you know, our radiocarbon dating isn't that good to put it down to very precise states. But, you know, one could imagine that this cave was being used by, you know, wild animals, that people, animals were scavenging in there as well as humans using it as a butchery site. So we can't really tease it apart. But it seems more likely that it would have been a separate occasion that this wolf would have entered the cave.

Dr. William Marsh (29:31)

What's interesting here is that the gray wolves would have been hunting the same thing as the humans would have been hunting. So they would have been tracking the reindeer as they seasonally migrated around, the humans would have been tracking them, but so would have the great wolves. Same Place, same time, no direct association, but almost certainly in competition to a degree with one another.

Tristan (29:52)

So we've already talked about from the data that you've gathered from this dog mandible, how it's revealed the age of the dog, the closeness to modern day dogs compared to wolves. But Selena, what other information about this dog have you been able to gather? Have you been able to ascertain from the surviving mandible?

Dr. Selina Brace (30:17)

So, yeah, we sort of like hinted at this a little bit earlier. And this is actually the isotopic data that we use to look at the wolf. And as William says, this is about, this tells us about diet. We've used it a lot more in the past in sort of like archeological studies to assess past human diets. Because as we said, this is looking at those differences in carbon and nitrogen. Nitrogen in particular tells us about tropic level. So the position that an animal occupies in the food train. So like a high level carnivore versus a mid level omnivore versus a low level sort of herbivore. So, yeah, this kind of analysis doesn't actually provide us with a menu card of like their last supper or anything like that, but it does allow us to compare the values across different species. And in this case, we were able to look at the nitrogen values from both the human remains at the site and the animal and the dog remains at the site. And when we looked at this, we see that there are these dietary similarities across the dogs and the humans and that they have a very similar diet and this similar degree of omnivory. So obviously what we kind of like, what one draws from this is there's a possibility they were sharing the same diet. And as in the humans were potentially feeding the dogs the same things that they were eating, which is really exciting, I have to add, because, you know, we're scientists and that's what we do. There is a tiny caveat with this in that it isn't quite as clear cut as that being definitive, because when we looked at that wolf, you remember we had that wolf at the cave as well. They also show a very similar value. So it's not quite as clear as they were exactly, you know, just exclusively sharing their dinner, but it's, you know, it does still very much point to shared lives and this closeness and a close bond between them as well.

Tristan (32:19)

William, I remember doing an interview with Dr. Angela Perry a couple of years ago on like the earliest dogs and the importance of leftovers in the story of dog domestication. And we'll put a Link in the description to our chat with Angela, Dr. Angela Perry as well, about that, where she explores more about that. But we'll get to dog domestication in a bit. But could we imagine a scenario where these people in Gough's cave? Selina says it's not completely clear, but, you know, they were having their dinner and then what they didn't eat the leftovers were given to the dog in their community, were given to the dog in Gough's cave at that time.

Dr. William Marsh (32:53)

Yeah, yeah, that's almost certainly a possibility. And I don't really want to muddy the waters here, but I am going to, I'm going to bring in another site from the same study which we've been in, which we've analyzed this golf cave dog, another site in Turkey. So this is very, very similar age. You have a dog here, genetically identified dog. You also have humans. Now, the humans at this point were very different to the Magellanians. At Gough's Cave, they were eating fish, they were eating cereals. When we run the same analyses on these dogs at this Pinabashi site, this Turkish site, we find that both humans and dogs have elevated nitrogen values, indicating they were eating fish. So whilst at Gough's Cave, it's trickier to say that at Pinabashti, this other site where we found another very, very, very old dog, it is almost certainly that these dogs were being either directly or indirectly given fish to eat by the humans. And these are not big fish, these are small little sort of roaches, minnow type things which you find all across the site. So yeah, as Angela says, almost certainly a possibility of how this, of how they were being fed, either directly or indirectly.

Tristan (34:10)

But that is amazing. That's one of the things that makes this research, no doubt why it's so popular when you guys announced it to the world, this relatable nature of it, the fact that we're going back to the Ice Age, we're talking about dogs, we're talking about a community feeding their dog as well. And it's not just this idea of an ancient prehistoric dog being used for a practical purpose, for hunting, to benefit the community. The fact that we're getting insights into that kind of close bonded nature that so many of us still have with dogs today.

Dr. William Marsh (34:40)

Yeah, I agree they probably were being used for hunting or centuries, almost certainly, but they were not completely utilitarian. There is a symbolic relationship here which we get from the isotopes, but also this other sort of post mortem relationship you see, between the dogs at Gough's Cave and the Humans. At Gough's cave, as Selina said earlier, we have this postmortem modification of human remains. We also find that on the dog as well.

Tristan (35:12)

You guys are so great at teeing up what I was about to ask next. So, yes, what happened to this dog?

Dr. Selina Brace (35:19)

Okay, well, obviously we don't know exactly what happened to this dog. This dog died. It is quite likely that this dog would have been used by the humans in life and in death. So it's possible that this dog would have been eaten by the humans. It would have been had a nutritional function for them. This is the Paleolithic, after all. You have to make use of the resources that you have. But there is more. It isn't just basic nutritional requirement associated with this dog, because we also see these post mortem modifications. There's aspects of this mandible that were treated after the animal had died by the humans. One would assume that they're human companions. And this is that they actually make a hole in the mandible. And this is important. Why waste time, energy doing this if this animal to you did not have some significance? They make a perforation in it for what, we don't know for sure. One can imagine lots of different ways they may have used that or why. But the fact is that they actually do something with these remains more akin to a ritual modification rather than it being a basic nutritional requirement for food. And that is, I think, what sets apart this bone and the dog to the other animal remains at the site.

Dr. William Marsh (36:37)

Definitely. And we actually also see very similar treatments at this Turkish site I mentioned previously. So the humans are completely different. Rather than eating their dead, they do something which in our minds, it's probably far more sensible, they bury their dead. But alongside these human burials, you actually find dog burials as well. So at Gough's cave and at Pinabashi, you've got two completely different human groups behaving very, very differently. But they appear to be treating their dogs in the same manner, same symbolic manner at each site, dependent on whichever culture they're with, and alongside this as well. So once we'd done the DNA analysis of this individual from Gough's cave and also at Pinabasi, it sort of, I hate using one of my close collaborators phrases here, but it was essentially the Rosetta Stone. It allowed us to look back at other samples for which we had very, very poor DNA preservation for and see, okay, now we have a dog from Gough's cave. Now we have a dog from Pinabashi. Is there anything that these data can tell us about other potential dogs in the region. And the answer was, well, we've actually been able to identify three other dogs in central Europe. And one of them in particular from a site called Bonnaber Castle in Germany, was found, again, a sort of semi skeleton. There's a mandible, there's a few long bones, but it was found alongside a burial of two individuals dated around 15,000 years ago. And it has on its mandible some pathologies which have seemingly been able to heal. And the only way they would have been able to heal is through care. And that care we interpret as being almost certainly given by humans. So, again, it's this close interaction between humans and dogs which we see. Gough's Cave has essentially unlocked loads of other insights which we can have about the dog human relationship.

Tristan (38:35)

Because before this research, what was the earliest known concrete evidence for dogs in western Eurasia? Did it actually span as far back as the Paleolithic, as the Ice Age?

Dr. William Marsh (38:44)

So it's very. This is very tricky. As I said earlier, there's been loads of claims. The earliest genetic evidence we have for dogs anywhere before this study was 11,000 years ago. And this was in northern Europe, Sweden, Russia, actually, more sort of western Russia. This dog at Bonaba Castle, although we have very, very poor DNA preservation in it because of its association with this human burial, because of these pathologies, it was widely seen as the earliest dog, although genetically we had no understanding of, we didn't know whether it was a dog or wolf. This analysis has allowed us to confirm, yes, it is indeed a dog. And we found other ones

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Hello, it's Brooke Devard from Naked Beauty. Join me each week for unfiltered discussion about beauty trends, self care, journeys, wellness tips and the products we absolutely love and cannot get enough of. If you are a skincare obsessive and you spend 20 plus minutes on your skincare routine, this podcast is for you. Or if you're a newbie at end the beginning of your skincare journey. You'll love this podcast as well, because we go so much deeper than beauty. I talk to incredible and inspiring people from across industries about their relationship with beauty. You'll also hear from skincare experts. We break down lots of myths in the beauty industry. If this sounds like your thing, search for naked beauty on your podcast app and listen along. I hope you'll join us.

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Tristan (40:59)

Going back to the evidence of postmortem modification on the mandible that survives Selena, I guess that very much aligns with what you mentioned earlier about the human remains. There was that one which has the zigzags on it as well. So there is some clearly on this mandible, dare I use the word art or something like that, some creations on the bone after death that leave a lasting mark on the survivor. Well, on the remains of this dog, yeah.

Dr. Selina Brace (41:28)

So with the human remains on the arm bone where we have the zigzag, I think that you can see as being artistic, you know that that's. I think both are creative. But you know, the arm bone, one can be seen as being artistic. And the. And on the dog bone is definitely modified for a purpose. It's modified, it's creative. It's showing that there is this connection even after death and that it has more purpose to it. So, yeah, I think to me, to me anyway, it attests that strong bond between human and dog. But.

Dr. William Marsh (42:06)

And it also makes you think, why did they do it? Why did they make this hole in the mandible? Could have thread been strung through it and was it being used as something? I don't know. I. My brain doesn't allow me to think that way. There's some anthropologists and archaeologists out there who will almost certainly have better insights than I have. But is. It's. There's no reason to have really have done it must have been symbolic.

Dr. Selina Brace (42:27)

Yeah.

Tristan (42:27)

I mean, well, yes. Is it not too far fetched to say necklace? Could this have been a very morbid necklace?

Dr. Selina Brace (42:33)

I really want it to be a necklace. I really want it to be a necklace.

Tristan (42:37)

Selena, this is such a cool discovery and it sounds like there will be more information coming to light around it in the future. What has this new discovery at Gough's Cave, what would you say it's revealed? What new evidence. What new information has revealed about people coming back to Britain at the end of the ice age, some 15,000 years ago? What new information has it revealed?

Dr. Selina Brace (43:00)

Yeah. So it's not just revealing information about the dogs, but it's also revealing about people as well. I mean, yes, so it pushes back this earliest genetic evidence for domesticated dog by more than 5,000 years, as we mentioned. But it is really intriguing, this aspect of these different people, these different cultures who had dogs. So Williams mentioned that we have these different groups, we have these Magdalenian people, these Magdalenian culture at Gough's Cave, and then we have the Epigravetian culture, a different group of people at Pinabashi Cave in Turkey. We have these different groups, we have these culturally different people, the Magdalenians at Gough's Cave, and then we have the Anatolian hunter gatherers at the Pinabashi Cave in Turkey. So these two culturally different groups are culturally different. They have different burial practices, they have some different diets. We've said we have the fish diet evidence that the cave, whereas we have a more faunal diet evidence from Gough's Cave. But they're also genetically distinct, that these people actually genetically look different and both and culturally look different. And yet they both have dogs. And then when we look at the genetics of these dogs, these dogs are actually pretty similar genetically to each other. So what this would seem to show is that even though these people aren't exchanging, they're not interbreeding, they're not exchanging cultural goods and ideas, they are exchanging these dogs or these dogs are moving between them, or there is the connection between the dogs. It's kind of tantalizing to think that these dogs are the thing that starts to unite people. I mean, again, that's me like kind of imagining things and thinking of this in a kind of a future way. But, you know, what is true for absolute is that these, these groups are very culturally different, genetically different, but the dogs are very similar. So something is happening here where they are exchanging the dogs or these dogs are actually moving between them. There is a closeness there, and this could be the thing that is binding them, which is a fascinating thought.

Dr. William Marsh (45:16)

It is remarkable that these two sites, three and a half thousand kilometers apart, two and a half thousand miles, have humans. There's no evidence of any interaction between humans. They're completely different. Different area, different genetically, but they have exactly the same dogs. And we were looking at how to. Actually, that was a big question for about a month. How on earth did they get there? And what we're thinking now is that this sort of third culture, the Epigavetian, who we find in the Balkan region, an Italian region, they begin to spread northwards after the Megalanians have spread. You see evidence of dogs with this group, this Epigoetian group, at Sites in Italy, Switzerland and Germany. You actually see the epigetian coming into the UK at about 14,000 years ago, 1440, 5000 years ago. So the Goughs Cave is really the example of the last Magdalenian assemblage in the uk. And then after that the epigevetian ancestry and lithic culture and their culture spreads across the UK. And it was this expansion which started around 16,000 years ago, which we believe perhaps spread these dogs across the region. Because although at Gough's Cave we don't see any evidence of the epicuretian at Pinabasha, in the anatomy hunter gatherers, they show evidence of gene flow between the humans. So there is evidence of connectivity. Epigobettian culture and the Antonio Hunter culture. Goughs Cave is a little bit more complicated. But the fact that we have epigevetions 800 years later in the UK makes me think that the dogs were being spread by these epige vetians and that somehow these Magellanians got these dogs. How they did that, again that's one free anthropologist. But we almost certainly think that. Yeah, that's our current best working hypothesis.

Tristan (47:04)

It's so interesting, isn't it? I mean, as a Joe Bloggs listening in to you guys. Do we get a sense then that more than 15,000 years ago that an already domesticated line of dogs were coming west into western Eurasia and then, you know, kind of spreading far and wide. So ultimately you get certain domestic dogs in that site in Turkey, but ultimately you also, 15,000 years ago you get similar, a similar type of domestic dog in the UK as well. Is that the information we can start to glean, William?

Dr. William Marsh (47:38)

Yeah, that is exactly the sort of information we can start to glean. And I think what is interesting is the fact that these cultures almost certainly didn't have dogs beforehand, but they've obviously seen the utility of these dogs and then they've incorporated them into their cultural behavior. Whereas in sort of later periods, the Mesolithic, the Neolithic, when a dog moves or when a human moves, a dog moves. Yeah. So you could. It's actually quite easy to track population movements of humans via dog genomes. They're both sort of quite well correlated. If you see a dog with this ancestry pattern, you're going to see a human with this antigen pattern. Whereas in the Paleolithic we don't see that we see the same dogs across completely different human groups. And it's how that radiation happened. We think it's every Goetian. We still are sort of pretty uncertain about it to be Honest. But it appears that dogs have spread due to their utility, most certainly due to better utility, I'd say, which is fascinating.

Tristan (48:32)

Do you think there is likelihood that further Ice age canid remains that may have already been discovered from Gough's cave or elsewhere will prove, with the new technology, will prove to also be a domestic dog? Do you think we'll have further examples of dogs from Ice age Britain coming to light in the future?

Dr. Selina Brace (48:53)

Yes, I do believe so. Well, I hope so anyway.

Dr. William Marsh (48:56)

I agree.

Tristan (48:57)

That's very exciting. Do you think it will be just be from Gough's cave or could you see us? Like, are there other very good late Ice Age Britain sites coming to light now? We've got humans, we got animal remains that might also reveal more information.

Dr. William Marsh (49:11)

There are this, is this. We are working on this. Let's just say we are working on this and not just the UK as well.

Dr. Selina Brace (49:17)

We're looking at more to come, Tristan. More to come. You'll be inviting us back again, we hope.

Dr. William Marsh (49:22)

Yeah, let's hope. Let's hope.

Tristan (49:24)

Okay, William, what you were saying about dogs coming into western Eurasia from the east, does this very much align with this idea? I know it must be still murky waters that when dogs are domesticated from wolves, it doesn't happen in what we now say is Europe, it happens further east and then you've already got domestic dogs coming west.

Dr. William Marsh (49:46)

It's tricky. It's tricky. So I think maybe I misspoke, but I was thinking more of a Epigavetians in the Balkan Italy region had the dogs had these dogs post ice age and then spread rather than being from the Near East. But in terms of how, where and when dogs themselves became domesticated, we thought when I first had the epiphany that we got a dog here, I really did think we'd be able to answer the question of where were these dogs domesticated? We. It hasn't really told us anything like that. Our whole paper's gone a completely different way compared to what it could have been, which is origins of dog domestication. And I think the best way to answer this question is just by heavily sampling more canids from a pre LGM period, which is almost certainly when dogs became domesticated. To try to pinpoint the sort of the link between the gray wolf population which became domesticated and the dog population which we have domesticated. And there are loads of sort of theories about how this might have occurred. You've got the lgm, so you've got the ice sheets on the. In northern latitudes, very Likely human populations or human populations did migrate southwards. Gray wolf populations would have migrated southwards into these refugia gray wolf population in very, very close interaction with the human population. That is probably the process of how dogs and wool or how dogs came out of wolves with that interaction between initially wild wolves and humans and very, very strong selective pressures which would have been experienced by its wolf population which then sort of leads them become dogs. But we don't know where it happened. Definitely Eurasia, but west, east. Don't know. There's loads of like theories and yeah,

Dr. Selina Brace (51:28)

I'd just add to that, that just saying if we think about the fact that we see that dogs and wolves are already so genetically distinct by 15,000 years and they are so widespread across Europe, as we've said, we've found these dogs now, we're all across Europe, they're widespread, they're very different. So clearly the actual domestication process must have happened quite a while before then. Yeah, and that's just what I would add to that.

Dr. William Marsh (51:53)

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And you can, you can sort of predict the divergence of a population from genetic data, from modern genetic data and can very strongly predict it was between 40 and 20,000 years ago, which isn't that precise, to be honest. I'd say many studies have come out saying okay, it must be 100,000 years ago, 80,000 years ago, but now with the latest data it's between 40 and 20, which still isn't particularly precise. But in terms of the archaeology and the sort of climate of the re. Of the, of the time, that is when the climate was beginning to worsen, glacial maximum type things. So then you're beginning to see populations behaving in perhaps different manners to they were 50,000.

Dr. Selina Brace (52:29)

It's actually a very informative time point, really.

Dr. William Marsh (52:32)

It probably is a time point where not only was probably the most important the dog domestication, but also human cultural evolution is probably the most important time period for that pre Neolithic.

Tristan (52:42)

Selena, William. This is a really exciting time and it sounds like there's more exciting information that will be coming to light around Britain's oldest dog around dogs in Ice age Britain and Europe in the future. Good luck with all the research, hope to get you back on the show when that information comes to light. And it just goes for me to say thank you so much to you both for coming on the show.

Dr. Selina Brace (53:05)

Tristan, always a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for having us.

Dr. William Marsh (53:08)

Yes, an absolute pleasure and we will be seeing you again, no doubt.

Tristan (53:16)

Well, there you go. There was Dr. William Marsh and Dr.

Narrator/Host (53:19)

Selina Brace talking through this brand new research, this exciting new discovery that Britain's first known dog goes back to the ice age, some 15ft years old. Really exciting time for those studying Ice Age remains and early human remains. With the new developments in science, that means that more and more discoveries are going to be revealed in the years ahead. We know how much you love it when we explore the deep past, the Ice Age, human evolution and so on. So don't you worry, we'll be doing more episodes similar to this in the future. I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening. Now, if you're enjoying the Ancients, please make sure to follow the show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. That really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favor if you'd also be kind enough to leave us a rating as well. Well, we would really appreciate that. That really does help us as we continue our mission as always to share these amazing stories from our distance past with you and with as many people as possible. You can also sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week. Sign up@history hit.com subscribe. That's all from me. I'll see you in the next episode.

Brooke Devard (54:36)

Hello, hello, it's Brooke Devard from Naked Beauty. Join me each week for unfiltered discussion about beauty trends, self care, journeys, wellness tips and the products we absolutely love and cannot get enough of. If you are a skincare obsessive and you spend 20 plus minutes on your skincare routine, this podcast is for you. Or if you're a newbie at the beginning of your skincare journey, you'll love this podcast as well because we go so much deeper than beauty. I talk to incredible and inspiring people from across industries about their relationship with beauty. You'll also hear from skincare experts. We break down lots of myths in the beauty industry. If this sounds like your thing, search for naked Beauty on your podcast app and listen along. I hope you'll join us day or night.

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