ScienceDaily

Researchers at Sweden's KTH Royal Institute of Technology say they have found further proof that the wolf ancestors of today's domesticated dogs can be traced to southern East Asia — findings that run counter to theories placing the cradle of the canine line in the Middle East.

Peter Savolainen, KTH researcher in evolutionary genetics, says a new study released Nov. 23 confirms that an Asian region south of the Yangtze River was the principal and probably sole region where wolves were domesticated by humans.

In the lost history whose DNA-aided recovery Wade chronicles, one of the most interesting chapters covers "gracilization" — that is, "a worldwide thinning of the human skull" starting around 40,000 years ago. Why was it that, millenniums before the agricultural revolution, our ancestors became progressively lighter-boned and smaller? A crucial clue: The fossil record and contemporary breeding experiments alike confirm that domestication, whether accidental — as in the evolution of the dog from the wolf — or deliberate, induces pedomorphism, or the retention of juvenile features into adulthood. "Gracilization . . . occurred because early modern humans were becoming tamer," Wade writes. "And who, exactly, was domesticating them? The answer is obvious: people were domesticating themselves. In each society the violent and aggressive males somehow ended up with a lesser chance of breeding.

Almost all species of domesticated animals prove to be ones whose wild ancestors... maintain a well-developed dominance among herd members.