The answer to the question "what was the first dog on earth?" is not entirely clear-cut, as different studies and sources point to different answers. However, there are some findings that suggest the following:
- An international team of scientists has identified what they believe is the worlds first known dog, which was a large and toothy canine that lived 31,700 years ago and subsisted on a diet of horse, musk ox, and reindeer.
- The Guinness Book of World Records recognizes Salukis as the oldest dog breed and notes the breed dates back to at least 329 B.C. .
- The greyhound breed is considered to be the oldest purebred domesticated dog breed, with indications of its existence dating back to the era of the Pharaohs, and the earliest documented records of greyhound-like dogs are from about 8000 years ago.
- Genetic evidence suggests that dogs descended directly from wolves (Canis) and that the now-extinct wolf lineages that produced dogs branched off from the line that produced modern living wolves sometime between 27,000 and 40,000 years ago. The timing and location of dog domestication is a matter of debate. There is strong genetic evidence, however, that the first domestication events occurred somewhere in northern Eurasia between 14,000 and 29,000 years ago.
- A recent genetic study conducted by an international team of researchers indicated that the Greenland Sled Dogs were around long before the Basenji, which was previously believed to be the oldest breed. By studying the 9,500-year-old remains of a dog found on the remote island of Zhokhov off the coast of Siberia, researchers thought they would find a primitive dog but instead, the Greenland Sled dog was already “a long way down the path to domestication” .
In summary, while there is no clear answer to what was the first dog on earth, the oldest known dog breeds include Salukis, greyhounds, and Greenland Sled Dogs.
