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Cambridge University Press
978-1-107-02414-4 — The Domestic Dog
2nd Edition
Frontmatter
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The Domestic Dog

Its Evolution, Behavior and Interactions with People
Second Edition
Why do dogs behave the way they do? Why did our ancestors tame wolves? How have we ended up
with so many breeds of dog, and how can we understand their role in contemporary human society?
Explore the answers to these questions and many more in this study of the domestic dog.
Building on the strengths of the irst edition, this much-anticipated update incorporates two
decades of new evidence and discoveries on dog evolution, behavior, training, and human
interaction. It includes seven entirely new chapters covering topics such as behavioral modiication
and training, dog population management, the molecular evidence for dog domestication, canine
behavioral genetics, cognition, and the impact of free-roaming dogs on wildlife conservation. It is
an ideal volume for anyone interested in dogs and their evolution, behavior, and ever-changing roles
in society.
James Serpell is Professor of Animal Ethics and Welfare at the School of Veterinary Medicine,
University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on the behavior and welfare of companion ani-
mals, the development of human attitudes to animals, and the history and impact of human–animal
relationships.
© in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org

Cambridge University Press
978-1-107-02414-4 — The Domestic Dog
2nd Edition
Frontmatter
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x List of contributors
James Serpell, PhD, Department of Clinical Bridgett M. vonHoldt, PhD, Department of Ecology
Studies, School of Veterinary Medicine, and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University,
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, NJ, USA
USA
Stephen Wickens, PhD, Universities Federation for
Linda van den Berg, PhD, Rotterdam, the Animal Welfare (UFAW), Herts, UK
Netherlands
Mariko Yamamoto, PhD, Ibaraki, Japan
Zsófia Virányi, PhD, Messerli Research Institute,
Veterinärmedizinische Universität Wien Stephen Zawistowski, PhD, Gouldsboro,
(Vetmeduni Vienna), Wien, Austria PA, USA
© in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org

1
5 Introduction
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JAMES SERPELL
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2 Introduction
In the Introduction to the first edition of this book – published some 20 years ago – I bemoaned the
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general lack of objective and reliable scientific information about the domestic dog, and attributed
this dearth of knowledge to scientific chauvinism. “Most modern biologists and behavioral scien-
tists,” I wrote:
seem to regard domestic animals as “unnatural” and therefore unworthy or unsuitable as subjects for serious sci-
entific investigation. According to this stereotype, the domestic dog is essentially a debased and corrupted wolf,
an abnormal and therefore uninteresting artifact of human design, rather than a unique biological species (or
superspecies) in its own right, with its own complex and fascinating evolutionary history. (Serpell, 1995, p. 2)
I am happy to report that this statement no longer rings true. Indeed, the domestic dog has become
something of a scientific celebrity in recent years, and I would like to believe that the material
presented in the first edition contributed to this change of heart. Numerous, highly respected, “high
impact” scientific journals now regularly publish scholarly articles on the evolutionary origins of the
dog, its molecular genetics, its social behavior and cognitive capacities, and its complex interactions
with human society. Major international conferences are devoted exclusively to “canine science,”
while innumerable TV documentaries, books and blogs have done a remarkable job of conveying all
of this new dog science to a seemingly insatiable popular audience. At the same time, the dog’s suc-
cess as a social companion and working partner has continued to grow, not only among developed
nations but also in many developing countries. In 1995, for example, when the first edition came out,
an estimated 55 million dogs lived in the USA. Now the figure is closer to 80 million. And, as peo-
ple’s attachments for dogs as family members and valued assistants have grown, so too has concern
for the health and welfare of these animals.
Celebrity, however, comes at a price. More people may know more about dogs than ever before, but it
is often a shallow sort of knowledge that is easily exploited by self-styled dog experts for personal gain.
The carefully edited antics of these charismatic but frequently ill-informed dog gurus and “whisperers”
may be entertaining to watch on TV but, ultimately, it is the dogs who suffer when their owners imbibe
too much of this quasi-scientific “snake oil.” A major goal of this book is to serve as an antidote to these
popular depictions by providing a state-of-the-art scientific assessment of what we truly know – and
what we don’t know – about the evolution, natural history, and behavior of Canis familiaris. The field of
canine science has come a long way since 1995 but, as readers of this book will discover, many aspects
of the biology and behavior of dogs and their relations with people still remain mysterious.
The remarkable scientific progress in our understanding of dogs in the last 20 years means inev-
itably that some of the material presented in the original edition of The Domestic Dog is no longer
current or correct. Scientific advances have also identified some important gaps in the previous
volume, notably in areas where research has developed most rapidly in the last two decades. In the
process of bringing their chapters up to date, and incorporating so much new information, many of
the original contributors to the book have accomplished extraordinary feats of revision and synthesis
in their revised chapters. The addition of seven entirely new chapters, addressing research topics
that barely existed 20 years ago, has also successfully filled the more obvious holes in the original
structure of the book.
For convenience, this new edition is divided into four parts. Part I (Origins and evolution)
addresses two fundamental questions: Where did the domestic dog come from? And how, in evolu-
tionary terms, did it get to where it is today? Chapter 2 explores the latest archaeological evidence
for dog origins and domestication, and Chapter 3 examines the growing body of molecular evidence
of where the dog came from and when. Chapter 4 reassesses the evolutionary mechanisms underly-
ing the transformation of the earliest dogs into some of the working breeds we see today, each with
its own distinctive behavior and morphology.

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3 James Serpell
Part II (Behavior, cognition and training) is devoted to the topic of domestic dog cognition and
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behavior, as well as addressing so-called “behavior problems” and their treatment. Chapter 5 looks
at the complex world of canine behavioral genetics and what is known about the inheritance of
behavioral traits in different breeds, and Chapter 6 reviews the extensive literature on behavioral
development in dogs, particularly with regard to the long-term effects of early experience. Chapter
7 explores methods of identifying and quantifying breed and gender differences in behavior, while
Chapter 8 addresses the topic of canine social and communicatory behavior as well as exploring
differences in social behavior between wolves and dogs. Chapter 9 presents a timely review of the
literature on canine aggression, including the contentious issue of breed-specific legislation, and
Chapter 10 discusses the extensive new literature on the domestic dog’s cognitive and emotional
capacities. Chapters 11 and 12 both address the topic of dog training and behavior modification;
first from the viewpoint of veterinary behavior, and second, from an applied ethology perspective.
Part III (Dog–human relationships) focuses on the dog’s roles, welfare, and status in human soci-
ety. Chapter 13 considers the remarkable physical and psychosocial benefits that humans appear to
derive from canine companionship. In contrast, Chapter 14 summarizes the many welfare problems
confronting dogs in their various relationships with humans. Chapter 15 addresses cultural diversity
in human attitudes towards the domestic dog, and the surprising degree of ambivalence that dogs
excite despite their extraordinary contribution to human lives and livelihoods.
Part IV (Life on the margins) examines the lives of dogs living on the fringes of human society,
the various problems they face and cause, and the possible solutions to those problems. The ecology
and social life of free-roaming and feral dogs is described in Chapters 16 and 17, while Chapter 18
is devoted to the various impacts of free-roaming dogs on wildlife populations. Chapter 19 discusses
the contentious issue of how to accomplish dog population management in ways that are both cultur-
ally sensitive and humane. Finally, Chapter 20 provides a brief overview of some of the key issues
and remaining gaps in our knowledge of the domestic dog and its relations with people.
Each of the new chapters contributed to this edition of The Domestic Dog has been subjected to
critical peer review prior to publication. I am extremely grateful to Cristian Bonacic, Crista Coppola,
Katinka DeBalogh, Göran Ericsson, Elena Garde, Suzanne Hetts, Alexandra Horowitz, Greger
Larson, Evan MacLean, Ann McBride, Guillermo Perez, Peter Savolainen and Stephen Zawistowski
for volunteering their valuable time and expertise to this effort. I am also hugely indebted to Priscilla
Barrett for once again enhancing the text with her elegant chapter illustrations. I wish to thank all of
the eminent contributors to this book, and the staff at Cambridge University Press, for their patience
and forbearance during this volume’s somewhat lengthy production. Lastly, I am profoundly grate-
ful to Jacqui, Oscar and Ella for all of their love, support and forbearance.
References
Serpell, J. A. (1995). The Domestic Dog: Its Evolution, Behaviour and Interactions with People. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.

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Part I
Origins and evolution
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2
5 Origins of the dog: The archaeological evidence
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JULIET CLUTTON-BROCK
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2.1 Introduction
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After more than a century of argument and discussion, it is now generally agreed that the single
progenitor of all domestic dogs, ancient and modern, was the grey wolf, Canis lupus, but when and
where domestication first took place is still much argued about. Was the wolf domesticated in one
part of the world or in many regions over its huge range covering the Northern Hemisphere, and
what exactly constitutes a domestic dog? The word “domestic” means simply “of the home,” so any
tamed animal may be said to be domestic, but if the term is to be used as a scientific descriptive it
must have a biological definition, and there must be a clear separation between a wild species and its
domestic derivative. A domestic dog is not a tamed wolf but is it a separate species?
To paraphrase the most frequently used definition (see e.g. Lawrence, 1995, p. 551): a species
is a population of animals that breeds freely and produces fertile offspring. If the hybrid off-
spring are infertile then the parents are separate species, for example the horse and the donkey.
However, many animals that are normally considered to be separate species will interbreed with
fertile offspring, as will all the wild species of the genus Canis, these being the wolf, coyote, and
the several species of jackal. A more useful definition is the biological species concept which states
that, “species are groups of interbreeding natural populations that are reproductively isolated from
other such groups” (Mayr, 1966, p. 19). Using this definition, all fully domesticated animals can
be classified as separate species from their wild progenitors, from which they are reproductively
isolated. The dog is no longer a tamed wolf but, as a result of selective breeding under human
control, it has evolved into a new species, named by Linnaeus, Canis familiaris, which by further
reproductive isolation and under the influence of both natural and artificial selection produces new
breeds (Clutton-Brock, 2012).
2.2 Precursors of the dog
With the increasing care and advanced technology used in the excavation of archaeological sites
during the second half of the twentieth century, the bones of wolves have been found in association
with those of early hominins1 from as early as the Middle Pleistocene period. Examples include the
cave of Lazeret near Nice in the south of France, dated at 150 000 years bp2 (de Lumley, 1969),
Zhoukoudian in North China, dated at 300 000 years bp (Olsen, 1985), and the 400 000-year-old site
of Boxgrove in Kent, England (Robert & Parfitt, 1999). As these associations demonstrate, the sites
of occupation and hunting activities of humans and wolves must often have overlapped, but these
finds are dated to before the appearance of anatomically modern humans (Homo s. sapiens), and there
is no physical evidence of social interaction between the two species of hunters. During the 1990s,
however, molecular studies were beginning to be applied to archaeozoology and, in 1997, Carles
Vilà and his colleagues published their dramatic thesis suggesting that the wolf and the dog became
separate breeding populations at least 135 000 years ago (Vilà et al., 1997). This conclusion was
1
Hominin is the taxonomic term encompassing modern humans, extinct human species and all immediate ancestors, e.g.
Australopithecus. The term hominid is now given a wider use and includes all modern and extinct great apes as well as
modern humans and chimpanzees etc.
2
bp denotes the radiocarbon date expressed as radiocarbon years before present (taken as AD 1950). When written in
capitals, BP denotes that the radiocarbon date has been calibrated to provide the true or calendar age of the sample.

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9 Juliet Clutton-Brock
arrived at by comparing the number of genetic changes or substitutions in the control region of
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mitochondrial D NA derived from samples of wolves, dogs and coyotes. I t was found that dog and
wolf mtD NA differed by a maximum of 1 2 substitutions and an average of 5 . 3 , whereas the D NA
of wolves and coyotes ( Canis latrans) differed by at least 2 0 substitutions. W olves and coyotes are
believed, on fossil evidence, to have diverged about one million years ago, so the scientists used this
figure to calculate the rate of gene substitution assuming that such mutations occur at a steady rate
over time. This led them to conclude that dogs and wolves could have diverged more than 1 0 0 0 0 0
years ago.
The assumptions from this molecular evidence are no longer considered to be valid and this
extraordinarily early date for the emergence of the first “dogs” must be discounted (see vonHoldt &
D riscoll, C hapter 3 ) . B ut dating from about 1 0 0 0 0 0 years after this period, but before the peak
of the L ast G lacial M aximum ( hereafter L G M ) , around 2 6 0 0 0 to 2 0 0 0 0 years ago, a tranche of
canid remains has been identified from cave sites in Europe, the Ukraine and Siberia in which the
skulls and teeth appear to show what are assumed to be the characteristics of incipient domestica-
tion. These characters include a reduction in overall siz e, a shortening of the j aws and widening
of the snout, often without reduction in siz e of the teeth so that the cheek teeth are compacted.
W hen a wild canid is found with these abnormalities it is sometimes an animal that has been
k ept in captivity under stress and fed on an improper diet. B ased on the presence of these k nown
characters, Mietje Germonpré and her colleagues have identified more than six skulls which they
claim as P alaeolithic dogs from faunal assemblages that include large numbers of wolf remains
together with the bones of their prey, particularly mammoth. The sites are the caves of G oyet in
Belgium, Předmostí in the Czech Republic, and two sites in the Ukraine dating from before the
L G M ( G ermonpré et al. , 2 0 0 9 , 2 0 1 2 ) ,
F rom the I ce Age cave of R az boinichya in the Altai M ountains, Nik olai O vodov and colleagues
(2011) have identified another “incipient dog,” which they suggest represents, “an early Holocene
lineage of wolf domestication.” All these canid remains that have been identified as “dog” have
been dated to before the L G M ; that is, to around 3 0 0 0 0 years ago. I nterestingly, however, although
more than 190 skulls of cave bears have been recorded from the 30 000 year-old cave of Chauvet
in the Ardèche, and the walls are covered with a great many depictions of lions, there is not a
single authentic record of a wolf, either as a skull or in the rock art. At this time, there is no pub-
lished verification for the statement of Garcia (2005) and Germonpré et al. (2009, p. 481) that, “in
the deepest part of the cave, a track of footprints from a large canid is associated with those of a
child,” or that torch wipes made by this child were dated at c. 26 000 bp, nor that, “based on the
short length of medial fingers in the footprints the canid track was interpreted as being made by
a large dog. ”
The early hypothesis that domestication originated from the practice of capturing and taming
young wild individual animals was generally replaced in the second half of the twentieth cen-
tury by the theory that wild animals became associated with human groups and were thereby
habituated and tamed from their own volition ( see e. g. B udiansk y, 1 9 9 2 ) . W olves would have
scavenged around human settlements and would slowly have become enfolded into human soci-
eties; a process that could have occurred in any area where both wolves and humans lived, and
in any period from the M iddle P leistocene up to the present ( for a map see L arson et al. , 2 0 1 2 ) .
I t is further predicted that young wolves, which no longer hunted megafauna but scavenged for
food around human camps, would fail to develop the sk ulls and j aws of hunters and would exhibit
the less powerful musculature and skull structure of domestic dogs, as was shown with measure-
ments of the sk ulls of captive wolves as long ago as 1 8 9 4 ( W olfgramm, 1 8 9 4 ) . This is the basis
for the assumption by Germonpré and her colleagues that the canid skulls they identified from

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Figure 2.1 Ventral view of skulls identified as

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(a) “dog,” and (b) and (c) wolves. (Reprinted

from Journal of Archaeological Science, 36,
G ermonpré M ., S ablin, M .V ., R hiannon, E .
et al., F ossil dogs and wolves from P alaeolithic
sites in B elgium, the U kr aine and R ussia:
osteometry, ancient D NA and stable isotopes,
pp. 473–90 ( 209 ) , E lsevier and the R oyal
B elgian I nstitute of Natural S ciences, reprinted
with permission.)
Pleistocene caves were incipient dogs (see Figure 2.1). However, these “dog-like” characters do
occur in wild canids as a result of ecological stress and inbreeding, as shown in the sk ulls of Arctic
wolves (Clutton-Brock et al., 1994; Federoff, 1996) and sporadically in other wild canids as fig-
ured by M iles & G rigson ( 2 0 0 3 ) . I t is quite unk nown how often abnormalities of this type occur in
the sk ulls of modern wolves, let alone their relative numbers in wolves of P leistocene date. There
is also the crucial point, noted by C rock ford & K uz min ( 2 0 1 2 ) , that the caves in which G ermonpré
and colleagues’ six putative dog sk ulls were found range over thousands of k ilometres and at least
1 9 0 0 0 years in age.
I t could well be that, from time to time, P alaeolithic hunters reared tame wolf cubs in their
communities and it is possible that the skulls of these canids can be and have been identified as
incipient “dogs.” However, there is no evidence at present that these tamed wolves would have
bred in reproductive isolation from the rest of their species and thereby produced future genera-
tions of domestic dogs ( C rock ford & K uz min, 2 0 1 2 ; L arson et al. , 2 0 1 2 ) . The latest potentially
tamed wolf to be identified from the Pleistocene period, at present, is from the site of Avdeevo,
an open air site on the R ussian P lain near the city of K ursk , and dated between 2 0 0 0 0 and 2 1 0 0 0
years ago ( G ermonpré et al. , 2 0 1 2 , p. 1 8 5 ) . After this time the extreme climate of the L ast G lacial
M aximum may well have driven away all hunters and their prey from northern E urope and Asia
for around 5 0 0 0 years.

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2.3 Morphology and domestication

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After a few generations, the puppies of wolves living by scavenging as commensals in a human
community would exhibit a general reduction in the siz e of the body and head, and this trend is
mark ed in the remains of the earliest domestic dogs. R eduction in siz e is a characteristic feature
of the early stages of domestication not only in canids but in many different species of mammal
(Tchernov & Horwitz, 1991; Clutton-Brock, 1999). The small overall size of early domestic mam-
mals would have been partly a result of progressive stunting caused by malnutrition from the time
of conception. S tunted growth has been demonstrated in young animals k ept on an inadequate
diet, as in the experiments on pigs by M cM eek an in the 1 9 3 0 s ( see Hammond, 1 9 4 0 ) . There
would also have been strong natural selection for diminution, since small animals would have
survived better on little food. Tchernov & Horwitz ( 1 9 9 1 , p. 6 9 ) argued that diminution of siz e
in the early dogs was also a response to the changed ecological regime of the domestic state and
they suggested that:
The relief of selective pressures associated with domestication set in motion a cyclical reaction of accelerated
maturation, increased reproductive capacity with a tendency for litter sizes to be larger, and shortened genera-
tion time. This resulted in smaller siz ed, younger parents with smaller siz ed offspring.
D uring the process of domestication in the dog, the facial region ( muz z le and snout) became
shorter and wider with consequent crowding and displacement of the cheek teeth. 3 Tooth crowd-
ing occurred in the early stages because evolutionary reduction in the siz e of the teeth took place
at a slower rate than the shortening of the maxillary and mandibular bones. However, the teeth
did become smaller in time, and modern dogs have teeth that are very much smaller than those
of wolves, even in giant breeds such as the G reat D ane. The teeth may also be misplaced, or even
increased in number over the normal for the canid dental formula ( see M iles & G rigson, 203,
pp. 84 –8) . The shape of the mandible became more curved, and an angle developed between the
facial region and the cranium, called the “stop” in modern breeds. The eyes became rounded and
more forward-looking and the frontal sinuses became swollen, while the bones of the skull became
thinner. The tympanic bullae were reduced in size and flattened.
I t is probable that the colour of the coat would have changed from the tawny grey of the wolf to
the yellow of the dingo quite early on in the first dogs, and maybe, before long, this will be estab-
lished by molecular research, as it has been by L udwig et al. (2009) for the first domestic horses.
All these morphological changes are unlike ly to have had much to do with intentional selection but
occurred slowly as the result of physiological and hormonal changes associated with the transition
to domestic existence ( C rockf ord, 206 ; M orey, 192 ; L ord et al., C hapter 4 ) .
In the well-known experiments on the domestication of silver foxes in Russia that were begun
by D . K . B elyaev in the 1950s and continue to the present day, all the above changes occurred in a
short time without a change of diet, but simply as a result of fox cubs being strictly selected for the
physical and behavioral features of domestication. However, these remarka ble results were achieved
by intense artificial selection on animals that were the progeny of foxes that had been reared in small
cages for the fur trade for about 5 0 years ( S tatham et al., 201 1 ) . W hereas, as recogniz ed by Trut et al.
( 204 , p. 64) , the domestication of wolves would have been determined by natural selection for
3
Almost no whole skul ls of the earliest domestic dogs have survived, so it is not possible to investigate relative changes in
the different parts of the skul l. The work of W ayne ( 1986 ) suggests that, while the muz z le may have widened, the length of
the facial region, although shortened, would have remained in proportion to the reduced cranial length.

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coexistence with human hunters who, “were only one factor that shifted the direction of selection to
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behavior and the ability to exist in the new, anthropogenic environment.”
2.4 The first dogs
Apart from the possible precursors to the dog, dating from before the L G M , archaeological evidence
indicates that the dog was the first species of animal to be domesticated with certainty. This occurred
towards the end of the last Ice Age when all human subsistence still depended on hunting, gather-
ing and foraging. The record for the earliest directly dated canid remains that can be identified as
definite domestic dog, goes to a right maxillary fragment with cheek teeth from Kesslerloch Cave in
S witz erland ( F igure 2. ) . This cave is one of the maj or M agdalenian sites in C entral E urope and was
first excavated in 1898/9. Recently, a reappraisal of the faunal remains from the cave was carried out
by archaeozoologists, and a fragment of canid upper jaw was identified as dog and not wolf. This
was confirmed from its small size and from the morphology of the upper carnassial and first molar.
A sample of the dog maxilla was directly dated to 12 225 ± 45 bp (KIA-33350) or c.14 100–14 600
B P ( Napierala & U erpmann, 201 2 ).
Until the identification of the maxilla from Kesserloch the earliest find of a dog was of a mandible
from the late Palaeolithic grave of an old man and a young woman at Bonn-Oberkassel in Germany
( Nobis, 198 ) . This dog is dated through closely associated material to around the same date as the
Kesserloch maxilla, that is c.12 100 bp. After this period, the identification of the bones and teeth of
dogs on prehistoric sites and their separation from those of wolves has become relatively straight-
forward, as it was, for example, with the skul ls of a dog and a wolf from the E arly M esolithic site of
S tar C arr in Y orks hire, E ngland.
The well-known site of Star Carr is the most important Mesolithic site in Britain. The site was
occupied around a waterlogged lake side for around 350 years from c.10 70–1 350 B P during
the preboreal and boreal climatic periods. The I ce Age had ended and temperatures were close to
those of recent times, although the sea levels had not yet risen enough to separate B ritain from the
Figure 2.2 The right maxilla identified as

domestic dog from the M agdalenian cave of
K esserloch, S witz erland. ( F rom Napierala, H. &
Uerpmann, H-P (2012), © 2010 John Wiley &
S ons, L td, reprinted with permission.)

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C ontinent. A huge number of organic artifacts were preserved in the peat, including nearly 20
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harpoon points made of red deer antler. The site was first excavated by J. G. D. Clark in 1949–51,
the faunal remains were studied by F raser & K ing ( 1954 ) , and the dog was described in detail by
M agnus D egerbøl ( 196 ) , but work has continued on the site and on the artifacts and faunal remains
ever since.
I n 1 985, during excavations at the nearby M esolithic site of S eamer C arr, the neck vertebrae of a
dog were retrieved that match in age and size the skull of the Star Carr dog (Clutton-Brock & Noe-
Nygaard, 190 ) . A fragment of one of these vertebrae has provided a radiocarbon accelerator date
of 9940 ± 110 bp [Oxa-1030]. It is conceivable that the skull and neck came from one individual
dog, but they could also be from two dogs from the same litter or from unrelated dogs of the same
size and age. These are the only remains of dogs that have so far been identified from Mesolithic
B ritain ( of which there are a large number of sites) , so it is probable that the number of dogs during
this very early period was quite small. They were probably inbred and displayed little variation in
siz e amongst individuals.
Another remark able feature of the dog vertebrae from S eamer C arr is that two samples of bone
yielded stable carbon isotope ratios of – 1 4 . 6 7 % and – 1 6 . 9 7 % . These ratios reveal that the dog
obtained a significant part of its food from marine fish. Clutton-Brock & Noe-Nygaard (1990)
have therefore postulated that the sites of S tar C arr and S eamer C arr were hunting camps that were
visited by people who lived for much of the year nearer to the coast and obtained most of their food
by fishing.
The skul l of a fully adult dog very similar in siz e and proportions to the S tar C arr skul l has
been excavated from another Mesolithic wetland site at Bedburg-Köningshoven in Germany (Street,
198 ) . S imilar remains of dogs have also been found from the numerous waterlogged M esolithic
sites in Denmark where the period is known as the Maglemosian. The similarity in size and oste-
ological characteristics of the remains of these first domestic dogs found on prehistoric sites in
northern E urope may indicate that all these early dogs were the result of dispersal from a single
founder population. The skull of the dog from Bedburg-Köningshoven, for example, is closer in size
and morphology to the remains of the earliest dogs from western Asia than it is to the very large
European wolves, as exemplified by the Mesolithic wolf skull from Star Carr. However, wolves
must have lived close to human settlements in many parts of the world, and a single litter of puppies
from any one of these could have provided the founders for an independent domestication event that
subsequently became very widespread.
The dogs that have been identified from these Mesolithic sites in northern Europe come from
a similar time period to the sites in western Asia from where a cluster of canid remains has been
identified as belonging to Canis familiaris. These sites belong to the cultural period know n as
the Epipaleolithic or Natufian and they are associated with a dramatic change in human hunting
strategies. D uring the P aleolithic period, animals were ki lled by direct impact from heavy stone axes
and spears. During the Natufian, and the corresponding Mesolithic period of Europe, arrows armed
with tiny stone blades called microliths came into widespread use ( M ithen, 203 ) . The success of
these long-distance projectiles would have been enhanced by the new partnership with dogs that
could help to track down and bring to bay wounded animals. This cooperative hunting technique
would thus have resulted in greater hunting efficiency, as it does among some contemporary hunting
societies ( K oster, 208 ; L ee, 197 ).
During the 1930s, a small number of canid skulls from Natufian sites in Palestine were identi-
fied as those of dogs by Dorothea Bate; the most notable of these being a nearly complete skull
from the cave of Wady el-Mughara at Mount Carmel (Bate, 1937). Thirty years later, in the 1960s,
I re-examined the skulls from Mount Carmel, Shukbah, Zuttiyeh, and Kebarah that are held in the

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Natural History M useum, L ondon, and questioned their domestic status. M easurements showed that
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they were very similar to the sku lls of living Arabian wolves, except that they were slightly smaller
and rather wider in the palate (Clutton-Brock, 1962). In western Asia the wild wolf, Canis lupus
arabs, is, at the present day, the smallest of the subspecies that range over the northern hemisphere.
This makes the identification of fragments of canid bone from later archaeological sites difficult
because there is very little reduction in siz e from the wolf to the dog ( Harrison, 1973 ) . However, as
described by Dayan (1994) and Tchernov & Valla (1997), the fossil remains of wolf from Natufian
and earlier sites are from very large individuals, while the canids that have been identified from sites
of this period as dogs are as small as the M esolithic dogs from E urope. The realiz ation that the early
Holocene wolves of western Asia were as large as those in E urope has made a crucial difference
to the acceptance of the small canids from sites of equivalent date as dogs, and it is now generally
agreed that Bate’s identification of the canids from her early sites as dogs was correct. But were
they descended from the large wolves that inhabited the region at that time or had these dogs been
imported from somewhere else?
In the 1970s the discovery of a Natufian site with the burial of a human skeleton with its hand on
the remains of a puppy became the best-known early evidence for the domestication of the dog in
the Near E ast ( D avis & Valla, 1978 ) . The site is near the Huleh L ake in the upper J ordan valley in
Israel, and is dated at 12 000 years ago. Its inhabitants were hunter-gatherers who were on the verge
of becoming agriculturalists. They lived in round stone dwellings, used basalt pestles and mortars
for grinding cereals, and buried their dead in stone-covered tombs. In one of these, at the entrance
to a dwelling, the ske leton of an elderly human was found together with that of a puppy of between
four and five months of age. The human skeleton lay on its right side, in a flexed position, with its
hand on the thorax of the puppy (Figure 2.3). Since the finding of this human and canid burial at
Ein Mallaha, another Natufian burial with canid skeletons was excavated at the cave of Hayonim
Terrace, Israel. This burial is late Natufian in date and held the remains of three humans and two
dogs ( Tchernov & Valla, 197 ).
The canid remains in these graves have been widely accepted as those of the earliest dogs on cul-
tural grounds, that is, their close association with the human ske letons must imply that in life they
were highly valued animal companions and that therefore they must be domestic dogs. However, the
remarkable discovery of a fox skeleton buried with a human in a pre-Natufian grave throws the iden-
tification of these “dogs” based on the cultural evidence alone in doubt and reopens the question of
whether these canid ske letons are really those of domestic dogs. The skul ls are not morphologically
similar to those of j acka ls ( Canis aureus) but what else could they be?
’Uyun al-Hammam is a pre-Natufian site in northern Jordan, with elaborate human burials asso-
ciated with animal remains. E leven human ske letons had been buried in at least eight graves, as
described in the excavation report by L isa M aher and her colleagues ( 201 1 ) . I t is clear from the
careful interpretation of the burials that one of these humans had been buried with the body of a
fox ( Vulpes vulpes) , and later when this grave was opened again and the partly decomposed human
ske leton was moved to a bed of red ochre in another area nearby, the head of the fox was moved with
it. M aher et al. de scribe the association thus:
I t is possible that the link between fox and human was such that when the human died the fox was ki lled and
buried alongside. Later, when the graves were re-opened, these links were remembered and bones moved so
that the dead person would continue to have the fox with him or her in the afterlife.
The burial of the fox in close association with a human, as well as the burials of “dogs” in Natufian
graves in I srael, supports the view that, throughout their evolution, humans have possessed a unique
instinct for nurturing members other species of animals, irrespective of their potential “uses.” Thus,

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Figure 2.3 B urial of a human with a puppy

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from the Natufian site of Ein Mallaha, Israel.

( © S imon D avis, reprinted with permission.)
the biological and semantic divisions between the wild and the domestic, as we view them today,
may have take n thousands of years to become established.
C ontemporary and later sites in other countries of western Asia have also yielded canid remains
that have been identified as dogs (see, for example, Clutton-Brock, 1969 and Stanley Olsen’s Origins
of the Domestic Dog, 1985 , pp. 71–9) . Notable amongst these is a small mandible with compacted
teeth from the site of P alegawra in I raq, dated at around 12 0 years ago ( Turnbull & R eed, 1974 ).
F rom the following Neolithic period, between 90 and 70 years ago, remains of dogs become
ubiquitous in archaeological sites from many parts of the world, and in these, the dog-like features
of the skul l and teeth are fully developed. O ne hundred and thirteen fragments of skul ls, teeth and
skeletal bones have been identified as those of large domestic dogs from the early Neolithic site of
J armo in I raq ( 9250–7 bp) by L awrence & R eed ( 1983 ) . I n C hina there are Neolithic dogs from
70 ye ars ago ( O lsen, 1985 ).
R emains of dogs have been found with those of the extinct J apanese wolf, Canis lupus hodo-
philax, from the rock shelter site of Tocibara in J apan, dating at around 80 bp ( M iyao et al.,
1984 ) . O lsen ( 197 , 1985 ) considered that the small C hinese wolf, Canis lupus chanco, was the
ancestor, not only of early Chinese dogs, but also of those that moved with the early human immi-
grants across the B ering S traits into North America. However, molecular analysis has now provided
two conflicting theses for the origin of all dogs, worldwide: first, that of Leonard et al. ( 20) and

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vonHoldt et al. ( 201 ) who claim that all past and present domestic dogs in the world, including all
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those from the Americas, ultimately descended from the grey wolf of the Middle East, although out-
breeding with local wolves ( including the North American wolf) also occurred in the early history
of specific lineages. This claim supports the evidence from archaeozoology of the past 50 years. The
second claim of Jun-Feng Pang and colleagues (2009) argues for a single origin of all dogs worldwide
from wolves that lived in C hina, south of the Y angtz e R iver ( see vonHoldt & D riscoll, C hapter 3 ,
for discussion) .
2.5 Origin of dogs in the Americas
The first authentic description of the great variety of American aboriginal dogs was published
by G lover Allen ( 1920 ) , who divided the ki nds of North and S outh American native dogs into
17 groups: Eskimo, Plains Indian, Sioux, long-haired Pueblo, larger or common Indian, Klamath
Indian, short-legged Indian, Klallam Indian, Inca, long-haired Inca, Patagonian, Mexican hairless,
small Indian or Techichi, Hare Indian, Fuegian, short-nosed Indian, and Peruvian pug-nosed. The
earliest reliably dated remains of dog in North America come from the burial of the complete skel-
etons of four dogs in the K oster site in I llinois dated to around 850 years ago. I n S outh America,
the earliest presumed dog remains are from F ell’ s C ave in the southernmost tip of C hile. However,
the very early date of 10 700–6500 years ago has led to their identification being questioned, for
there are several extinct and living, wild species of indigenous canid that are possible candidates for
these remains. However, since flake tools and quantities of other animal remains have been exca-
vated from the earliest levels at F ell’ s C ave, there is no reason why these early American hunters
would not also have had dogs (Clutton-Brock, 1988).
As well as being valuable haulage animals, it is clear from archaeoz oological reports that dogs
in North America were important providers of meat. This has been evaluated from the early levels
of the P reclassic ( 120 B C –A D 250) site of C uello in B eliz e where the faunal remains showed that
dogs had been bred for food and killed at the end of their first year of life. The dogs were small,
falling within the size range of the “small Indian dog or Techichi” of Allen’s groups. They did not
belong to the hairless, xoloitz cuintli, since none of the mandibles showed the congenital lack of
anterior teeth, which is genetically linked with hairlessness (Clutton-Brock & Hammond, 1994).
Apart from the xoloitz cuintli, which is know n to have been ke pt purebred since ancient times,
there are no know n living breeds of indigenous native American dogs, for all have interbred, either
accidentally or by design, with immigrant E uropean dogs. This includes the E ski mo dog and the
modern breed know n as the Native American I ndian D og ( S chwartz , 197 ) . However, the many
different breeds that were owned by the F irst Nations are well know n from historical images and
written accounts, as well as from their buried remains and from artifacts and clothing made from
dog ski ns and hair.
An unusual and distinct breed, know n as the S alish wool dog, has been described from the south
west coast of British Columbia by European accounts in the late 1700s. They were small, long-
haired, white dogs that were bred exclusively for their thick soft fur. The wool dogs were ke pt
reproductively isolated from all other dogs in houses for most of the year but taken to off-shore
islands, with buried dried fish for food, during the summer salmon fishing season. They were owned
by women, and the thick fleeces of the dogs were sheared several times a year. The wool was woven
into S alish blanke ts. F ollowing the arrival of sheep with E uropean colonists, the wool dogs became
extinct ( S chulting, 1 94 ).

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2.6 Origin of dogs in Africa south of the Sahara

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B ecause dogs overlap in siz e with the endemic African j acka ls ( C. aureus, C. adustus and C. mesome-
las) it is not easy to distinguish their ske letal remains on archaeological sites. However, the spread of
dogs southward with livestock herders can be shown by the few authenticated finds of their remains
from the north to south sequence of archaeological sites: E sh S haheinab and K erma in S udan, c.
30–2 B C ; Ntusi in U ganda, AD 895–102; I ron Age K alomo in Z ambia, AD 950–1; south
of the Limpopo River in southern Africa after AD 600 (Clutton-Brock, 1993, p. 64).
I n S outh Africa there were two main groups of inhabitants before the southward expansion of
Bantu-speaking peoples. They were the indigenous Khoi people who belonged to a single linguistic
group but were divided into the Khoisan (Bushmen) who were hunter-gatherers and who survive
today in very small numbers, and the K hoikhoi ( Hottentots) who were pastoralists who herded cattle
and sheep, but who were almost all exterminated by E uropean colonists in the nineteenth century.
It is not known whether dogs first travelled south with Bantu-speaking herders from Central
Africa in the early Iron Age, or whether they arrived earlier in the South with the Khoikhoi pasto-
ralists who are believed to have originated further north in E ast Africa. The K hoikhoi would have
met the Khoisan who were hunter-gatherers, and who were the indigenous people living in South
Africa, and who survive today in small communities in arid areas of southern Africa, notably in the
K alahari ( B otswana) . They ke ep dogs that may be direct descendants of the ancestral stock and are
still a very important element in the social and economic life of these hunter-gatherers. In his now
classic work on the ! K ung S an of the K alahari D esert, R ichard L ee ( 197 ) recorded the use of dogs
for hunting and found that between a third and three-quarters of the animals killed during his study
period were obtained with the help of dogs that were often highly trained. L ee described the typical
!Kung dog as, “a small animal (50 cm tall at the shoulder) of undistinguished appearance. It is a
short-haired breed varying in colour from all black to all buff with many piebald forms” (Lee, 1979,
p. 143 ) . However, before the arrival of the colonists, dogs appear to have been more popular with
the K hoi pastoralists than with the hunters. I n the ancient rock art of southern Africa, there are rather
few images of dogs and these are usually shown following people, rather than in a hunt.
I ndigenous village dogs are everywhere in Africa today and when not interbred with imported
greyhounds and other breeds of European dogs they are remarkably similar in conformation through-
out their range. Towards the end of the twentieth century, a few dog-owners and biologists realized
that these dogs represent an ancient genetic lineage that should be preserved ( see L arson et al.,
201 ) . I n 198 a meeting was held to discuss the conservation of traditional African dogs. They were
given the name Africanis, and the Africanis S ociety of S outhern Africa was founded ( G allant, 20 ).
2.7 Origin of the dingo and New Guinea singing dog
Archaeological evidence indicates that humans first reached Australia more than 40 000 years ago.
The earliest dingoes arrived less than 12 0 years ago; a deduction based on the fact that there are
no remains of dogs from Tasmania, which became geographically isolated from mainland Australia
by the formation of the Bass Strait at about this time. Significantly, the Indigenous Australians never
acquired domestic pigs, and this would suggest that the dog was take n to the continent before the
earliest domestication of the pig. New archaeological and dating evidence indicates that pigs were
not take n to New G uinea and M elanesia before 30 B P ( O ’ C onnor et al., 201 1 ) .

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I n ske letal anatomy, the dingo closely resembles the small wolf of I ndia, Canis lupus pallipes, and
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the pariah dogs of S outheast Asia. B ased on mitochondrial D NA sequences analyz ed by S avolainen
and colleagues (2004), the dingo is now considered a direct descendant of a small founder popula-
tion of domesticated dogs that were introduced to Australia, possibly on a single occasion, around
50 years ago. The earliest radiocarbon date obtained for dog remains from Australia is 3450 ± 95
bp ( M ilham & Thompson, 1976 ) . Although the dog was never used for traction in Australia, as it was
by the Native Americans, it was greatly valued by the Aborigines as a hunting partner, companion,
bed-warmer and occasional item of food. After arriving in Australia, the dogs became feral, spread
rapidly, and have lived as part of the wild mammal fauna ever since.
E arly accounts by E uropeans of the I ndigenous Australians and the dingo describe a relationship
that was probably not dissimilar to that of hunter-gatherers and wolves all over Eurasia some 12 000
years ago, in the pre-agricultural period. The great majority of dingoes in the nineteenth century lived
and hunted as wild carnivores and may have been as widespread as wolves in the early Holocene of
E urasia and North America. Aboriginal families k ept some dingoes as pets, used some as hunting
partners, ate them when meat was scarce, and also showered them with affection. M eggitt ( 1 9 6 5 ) has
described the associations between the Aborigines and the dingo. These varied from hunting the adult
dogs for their tails, which were worn as headdresses, to capturing young pups which, if strong, were
reared as hunting partners, or, if weak , were eaten. M eggitt quoted a comment from L umholtz ( 1 8 8 9 ,
p. 179), writing about the dingo in northern Queensland: “its master never strikes, but merely threat-
ens it. He caresses it like a child, eats the fleas off it, and then kisses it on the snout.” These tamed
dingoes were, however, very poorly fed. Apart from being given bones, they were left to scavenge for
themselves, so that in the past a tame dingo could always be distinguished from a wild one by its poor
condition ( M eggitt, 1 9 6 5 ) . M ore recent relationships between the I ndigenous Australians, dingoes
and introduced domestic dogs have been reviewed by Smith & Litchfield (2009).
F or the last hundred years the dingo has been regarded as vermin and persecuted because it ki lls
sheep. Those that remain in the wild are in great danger of losing their purebred status through
interbreeding with free-roaming European dogs (Ginsberg & Macdonald, 1990, pp. 52–4). The
extermination of the purebred dingo would be a great loss because it is part of the living heritage of
hunter-gatherer culture, as well as being part of Australian history.
D ogs may have been take n to New G uinea at around the same time as to Australia to provide
meat and hides and fur in a land that was dominated by wild birds. I t may be assumed that the dogs
became feral here also and spread rapidly into the forests and high altitude mountains. Here they
bred under natural selection and evolved into a distinct ecomorph with the tawny-yellow coat of the
dingo and the unique singing howl, which carries over great distances.
2.8 Conclusions
To every part of the world where people have travelled for perhaps 10 0 years, they have take n
their dogs with them, as they still continue to do. Today, genetics and archaeology have come
together to open an entirely new window on the history of the interactions between humans and ani-
mals. I t is now possible not only to discover when and where domestication of each species occurred
but also from which particular genetic race of progenitor species they were first descended, and how
and when they were moved around the world. However, none of these amaz ingly detailed facts can
be deduced without the expertise of the archaeologist who excavates the animal remains, and the
archaeozoologist who identifies and interprets the species.

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evolution of the domestic dog. Journal of Archaeological under domestication: unconscious selection in primeval
Science, 19: 181–204. domesticates. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology,
Musil, R. (1984). The first known domestication of wolves 10: 54–75.
in central Europe. In Animals and Archaeology: 4. Tchernov, E. & Valla, F. F. (1997). Two new dogs, and other
Husbandry in Europe. eds. C. Grigson & J. Clutton- Natufian dogs, from the southern Levant. Journal of
Brock. Oxford: BAR International Series, 227, pp. 23–6. Archaeological Science, 24: 65–95.

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experiment on fox domestication and debatable issues of Genome-wide SNP and haplotype analyses reveal a rich
evolution of the dog. Russian Journal of Genetics, 40 : history underlying dog domestication, Nature, 4 6 4 : 8 9 8 – 9 0 2 .
64 –5 . W ayne, R . K . ( 1986 ) . C ranial morphology of domestic
Turnbull, P . F . & R eed, C . A. ( 1974 ) . The fauna from the and wild canids: The influence of development on
terminal P leistocene of P alegawra C ave, a Z arz ian morphological change. Evolution, 40 : 243– 61 .
occupation site in northeastern I raq. Fieldiana W olfgramm, A. ( 1 8 9 4 ) . D ie E inwirk ung der G efangenschaft
Anthropology, 63 : 81 – 146 . auf die Gestaltung des Wolfsschädels. [The influence
Vilà, C . , S avolainen. P . , M aldonado, J . E . et al. ( 197 ). of captivity on the development of wolf sk ulls. ]
M ultiple and ancient origins of the dog. Science, 276 : Zoologische Jahrbucher. J ena Abteilung fur S ystematik
1687–9 . B d. 3 : 7 7 3 – 8 2 2 .

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3
5 Origins of the dog: Genetic insights into dog
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domestication
BRIDGETT M. VONHOLDT AND CARLOS A. DRISCOLL

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23 Bridgett M. vonHoldt and Carlos A. Driscoll
3.1 Introduction
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Dogs are the oldest domesticated animal and today are second only to cats as the most popular pet
in western societies (Boyko, 2011; Leonard et al., 2006; Wayne and vonHoldt, 2012). The dog has
taken on many significant roles in human society, ranging from companion, sentry, and hunting
partner to its more recent function as a model for understanding human disease. By exploring the
genetic and evolutionary history of our canine companions, we can better understand not only the
natural history of dogs but also our own evolutionary history.
Inquiries into the dog’s natural history are now enlightened by molecular and genetic data to
an overwhelmingly greater degree then they were 20 years ago when the first edition of this book
was published. This trend towards increasing molecular inference will certainly continue, though
morphology and archaeology will remain vitally important in completing our understanding of the
cultural context of the changes wrought by domestication.
3.2 The wolf, ancestor of the dog
The dog and its ancestor, the wolf (Canis lupus), belong to the family Canidae. The 34 living species
of canids are grouped into four clades: a red fox-like clade, a South American clade, a wolf-like
clade, and a clade comprising only the gray and island fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus and U. lit-
toralis, respectively) (Lindblad-Toh et al., 2005; Perini et al., 2009) (Figure 3.1). Canids are found
in all terrestrial habitats and, with the human-assisted introduction of dogs and foxes to Australia
and New Zealand, Antarctica is now the only continent without a resident population. Currently,
seven species belong to the dog-like genus Canis (Figure 3.2), which arose nearly six million years
ago (mya) in North America and, along with a number of other carnivore species, expanded into
Eurasia (4 mya) via the Beringian land bridge, and subsequently into Africa (3 mya) (Wang &
Tedford, 2008). The archaeological record indicates that the modern-day gray wolf (Canis lupus
lupus) evolved in Eurasia around 3–4 mya, re-invading North America about 500 000 years ago
(Wang & Tedford, 2008). Supremely adaptable, the wolf inhabits nearly every habitat and environ-
mental condition (Mech & Boitani, 2003). Wolves vary greatly in size depending on their environ-
mental distribution, from the gracile 13 kg wolves of the Middle Eastern deserts to the large robust
individuals (over 78 kg) of the Arctic tundra.
Members of the genus Canis vary in appearance, behavior and degree of sociality (Mech &
Boitani, 2003; Packard, 2003). Based on recent molecular genetic studies and corroborating mor-
phological evidence, it is now agreed that the sole ancestor of the dog is the gray wolf, Canis lupus.
Though this verdict settles hundreds of years of speculation on dog origins (e.g. Clutton-Brock,
1981; Darwin, 1868), resolving which particular group of wolves was directly ancestral to the dog
still proves challenging (Ding et al., 2012; Franz et al., 2016; Freedman et al., 2014; Pang et al.,
2009; Savolainen et al., 2002; Shannon et al., 2015; vonHoldt et al., 2010; Wang et al., 2016).
Establishing an evolutionary timeframe for the initial domestication process is similarly problem-
atic, though estimates based on archaeological records and mitochondrial DNA indicate 16 000 and
12 000 years ago, respectively (Clutton-Brock, Chapter 2; Larson et al., 2012). The taxonomic status
of the dog remains contentious in some quarters, with a minority calling for the dog to be listed as a
separate species, Canis familiaris, while others consider it a subspecies of the gray wolf (i.e. Canis
lupus familiaris).

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24 Origins of the dog: Genetic insights into dog domestication
Figure 3.1 Canidae phylogeny

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Island fox with estimated dates of

Gray fox divergence in millions of years
indicated on the branches.
Maned wolf
(Adapted by permission from
Bush dog John Wiley & Sons: Journal
of Evolutionary Biology
(Perini, F. A. et al., The evolution
of South American endemic
canids, etc.), copyright 2009.)
(A black and white version of
South American species

this figure will appear in some
Darwin’s fox
formats. For the color version,
please refer to the plate section.)
Culpeo (Andean fox)
Hoary fox
South American gray fox
Pampas fox
Sechuran fox
Crab-eating fox
Short-eared dog
African wild dog
Gray wolf
Dog
Wolf-like canids
Coyote
Golden jackal
Dhole
Side-striped jackal
Black-backed jackal
Bat-eared fox
Raccoon dog
Red fox-like species
Corsac fox
Red fox
Arctic fox
Kit fox
Fennec fox

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Gray wolf (Canis lupus) Gray wolf (Canis lupus)

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Eu
Golden jackal
NAm (Canis aureus)
ME As
Red wolf
Coyote (Canis rufus)
(Canis latrans) Af
Ethiopian wolf
Side-striped jackal (Canis simensis)
(Canis adustus)
SAm
Aus
Black-backed jackal
(Canis mesomelas)
Figure 3.2 Species of Canis from the wolf-like clade and their current geographic distribution (IUCN, 2012).
Distributions may overlap. Wolves were historically widespread across the Old and New Worlds, with current
fragmentation a result of humans. Abbreviations: Af, Africa; As, Asia; Aus, Australia; Eu, Europe; ME, Middle East;
NAm, North America; SAm, South America. (A black and white version of this figure will appear in some formats. For
the color version, please refer to the plate section.)
3.3 The human handprint: Canine domestication
Just what is meant by domestication? Domestic is a colloquial term applied to many animals habit-
ually used by humans or habituated to human places. Domestication, in contrast, is a biological
process that leads to the development of unique human–animal relationships that vary greatly both
in quality and intensity. To borrow a concept from ecology, we could describe the relationship that
many people today believe they have with their dogs as a mutualistic one – i.e. one in which both
parties benefit from the association. But we can also recognize dog–human relationships that might
be better described as commensal – i.e. cases in which one member (the dog) benefits from the
association while the other is more or less unaffected. Both represent examples of domestication but
clearly to different degrees.
Domestication is fundamentally different from taming, which is the habituation of an individual
animal to human presence. Domestication alters the genetic (and morphological) characteristics
of a breeding population and, unlike taming, these changes are heritable (Coppinger et al., 2009).
The domestication of wolves was an evolutionary process that favored any heritable predisposition
to tameness in a restricted population of ancestral wolves when in close proximity to human pop-
ulations (see Box 3.1). Subsequently, the process of domestication mandates a degree of genetic
isolation from the parent species in order to segregate alleles controlling the suite of behaviors and
morphology encompassing the “domestication syndrome” (see below).
For our purposes here, domestic dogs are wolves that have undergone a process of selection, cru-
cially relating to behavior and cognition, but also including morphology and metabolism, which has

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26 Origins of the dog: Genetic insights into dog domestication
resulted in heritable genetic changes in allele frequencies. There continues to be much debate and
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speculation as to how this selection process occurred but, either way, it is likely to have happened in
a series of stages (Diamond, 2005; Driscoll et al., 2009; Lord et al., Chapter 4; Vigne, 2011; Zeder,
2012):
1. Selective affiliation of wolves with humans predisposed to tolerance and lower levels of aggres-
sion and fear in proximity to humans; a process shaped by a combination of natural selection and
human acceptance.
2. Fitness advantages accrue to those wolves that reproduce successfully in, or in close proximity
to, the human environment, probably reinforced by a degree of human provisioning (transition
from natural to unconscious artificial selection).
3. Early selection for “utility” leading to the initial emergence of primitive dogs by an unconscious
process of artificial selection.
4. Prehistoric type formation based on landraces or specific utilities (e.g. coursing, baying, short
legs, etc.) (a transition from unconscious to deliberate artificial selection).
5. Modern era of genetic isolation and rapid radiation of highly specialized breeds, often based on
physical conformation, rather than strict utility (methodical artificial selection).
Not all domestic dogs have been subjected to all five of these stages. Some are best described as
semi-domestic in the sense that they have not been subjected to conscious selective breeding but
have, due to long association with humans and their environment, and long reproductive isolation
from their wolf ancestors, plainly become domestic animals (that is, they are clearly part of a human
landscape and are derived from it). Examples of such semi-domestic dogs include the dingo and
New Guinea singing dog, neither of which has been subjected to the kind of conscious selective
breeding associated with the modern radiation (stages 4–5) but which have experienced the early
stages of domestication (stages 1–3).
Box 3.1 Natural versus artificial selection
Charles Darwin discussed artificial selection as an analogue of evolution by natural selection

(Darwin, 1868), but both selection processes require that the desired traits are heritable with
some more advantageous than others. Natural selection is the environmentally driven mecha-
nistic process that works to preserve only the adaptive variants; artificial selection works in a
similar way, but with the key difference that humans determine which traits are to be passed
on to the next generation of pups (Diamond, 2005; Driscoll et al., 2009). Human-imposed
selective breeding of only a subset of dogs shapes the canine population, shifting the frequen-
cies of morphological and behavioral traits. Therefore, the domestication of a species is an
evolutionary process accomplished through artificial selection.
The dingo has been isolated in Australia for approximately 5000 years (Larson et al., 2012;
Savolainen et al., 2004). During this time, dingoes have evolved primarily through natural selection
post-domestication, since they have never been subjected to the highly managed breeding found
among modern purebred dogs. As a result, the dingo is still readily socialized or habituated to human
proximity and has, historically, participated in mutually beneficial hunting parties with Australian
Aborigines, but it is also capable of living altogether independent of humans in self-sustaining

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100,000 ya: Ancestral wolf population
13,000−45,000 ya: Earliest

dog fossils identified
12,000−9,500 ya: Stone Age
Dog Wolf
5,000 ya: Dingoes to Australia
circa 1800s: “Victorian Era”,

Modern dog breed radiation
Today Feral and semi- Modern dog breeds

domesticated dog (>350 recognized)
breeds (e.g. dingo)
Figure 3.3 Model for dog domestication.
populations. Dingoes have also experienced some admixture with modern domestic dogs following
the arrival of European colonists, leaving a genetic fingerprint that has influenced the interpretation
of their evolutionary history (Figure 3.3) (Larson et al., 2012; Savolainen et al., 2004).
Likewise, the African village dogs recently described by Boyko et al. (2010) are a cryptic pop-
ulation of dogs living in association with humans that have not experienced the artificial selection
associated with modern breed formation. The term “cryptic” here refers to populations that are
morphologically indistinguishable from the surrounding population but which are still genetically
distinct, indicating that some degree of genetic isolation is being enforced either ecologically or
geographically. As a result of the absence of conscious artificial selection on these semi-domestic
populations, some hypothesize that such dogs harbor a closer representation of the early, domestic
dog genome, though this remains controversial.
Regardless of where wolf domestication occurred, the inter-specific bond between early dogs
and humans was probably loose enough to permit dogs to form transitory associations with local
gray wolves (Anderson et al., 2009; Randi, 2008; Vilà and Wayne, 1999; Vilà et al., 2005). This
fraternization allowed these dogs to hybridize with wolves, enriching the dog genome during early
phases of domestication, and thereby providing new genetic and phenotypic variants. A genome-
wide genetic study has confirmed these secondary contacts with local wolf populations, providing
new sources of genetic diversity to the genomes of early dogs (vonHoldt et al., 2010). Over suc-
ceeding generations, dogs acquired important status in human society, and often received benefits
from being part of the human “pack,” likely in the form of protection, access to resources, and

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DANCE ON STILTS AT THE GIRLS’ UNYAGO, NIUCHI
Newala, too, suffers from the distance of its water-supply—at least

the Newala of to-day does; there was once another Newala in a lovely
valley at the foot of the plateau. I visited it and found scarcely a trace
of houses, only a Christian cemetery, with the graves of several
missionaries and their converts, remaining as a monument of its
former glories. But the surroundings are wonderfully beautiful. A
thick grove of splendid mango-trees closes in the weather-worn
crosses and headstones; behind them, combining the useful and the
agreeable, is a whole plantation of lemon-trees covered with ripe
fruit; not the small African kind, but a much larger and also juicier
imported variety, which drops into the hands of the passing traveller,
without calling for any exertion on his part. Old Newala is now under
the jurisdiction of the native pastor, Daudi, at Chingulungulu, who,
as I am on very friendly terms with him, allows me, as a matter of
course, the use of this lemon-grove during my stay at Newala.
FEET MUTILATED BY THE RAVAGES OF THE “JIGGER”
(Sarcopsylla penetrans)
The water-supply of New Newala is in the bottom of the valley,

some 1,600 feet lower down. The way is not only long and fatiguing,
but the water, when we get it, is thoroughly bad. We are suffering not
only from this, but from the fact that the arrangements at Newala are
nothing short of luxurious. We have a separate kitchen—a hut built
against the boma palisade on the right of the baraza, the interior of
which is not visible from our usual position. Our two cooks were not
long in finding this out, and they consequently do—or rather neglect
to do—what they please. In any case they do not seem to be very
particular about the boiling of our drinking-water—at least I can
attribute to no other cause certain attacks of a dysenteric nature,
from which both Knudsen and I have suffered for some time. If a
man like Omari has to be left unwatched for a moment, he is capable
of anything. Besides this complaint, we are inconvenienced by the
state of our nails, which have become as hard as glass, and crack on
the slightest provocation, and I have the additional infliction of
pimples all over me. As if all this were not enough, we have also, for
the last week been waging war against the jigger, who has found his
Eldorado in the hot sand of the Makonde plateau. Our men are seen
all day long—whenever their chronic colds and the dysentery likewise
raging among them permit—occupied in removing this scourge of
Africa from their feet and trying to prevent the disastrous
consequences of its presence. It is quite common to see natives of
this place with one or two toes missing; many have lost all their toes,
or even the whole front part of the foot, so that a well-formed leg
ends in a shapeless stump. These ravages are caused by the female of
Sarcopsylla penetrans, which bores its way under the skin and there
develops an egg-sac the size of a pea. In all books on the subject, it is
stated that one’s attention is called to the presence of this parasite by
an intolerable itching. This agrees very well with my experience, so
far as the softer parts of the sole, the spaces between and under the
toes, and the side of the foot are concerned, but if the creature
penetrates through the harder parts of the heel or ball of the foot, it
may escape even the most careful search till it has reached maturity.
Then there is no time to be lost, if the horrible ulceration, of which
we see cases by the dozen every day, is to be prevented. It is much
easier, by the way, to discover the insect on the white skin of a
European than on that of a native, on which the dark speck scarcely
shows. The four or five jiggers which, in spite of the fact that I
constantly wore high laced boots, chose my feet to settle in, were
taken out for me by the all-accomplished Knudsen, after which I
thought it advisable to wash out the cavities with corrosive
sublimate. The natives have a different sort of disinfectant—they fill
the hole with scraped roots. In a tiny Makua village on the slope of
the plateau south of Newala, we saw an old woman who had filled all
the spaces under her toe-nails with powdered roots by way of
prophylactic treatment. What will be the result, if any, who can say?
The rest of the many trifling ills which trouble our existence are
really more comic than serious. In the absence of anything else to
smoke, Knudsen and I at last opened a box of cigars procured from
the Indian store-keeper at Lindi, and tried them, with the most
distressing results. Whether they contain opium or some other
narcotic, neither of us can say, but after the tenth puff we were both
“off,” three-quarters stupefied and unspeakably wretched. Slowly we
recovered—and what happened next? Half-an-hour later we were
once more smoking these poisonous concoctions—so insatiable is the
craving for tobacco in the tropics.
Even my present attacks of fever scarcely deserve to be taken
seriously. I have had no less than three here at Newala, all of which
have run their course in an incredibly short time. In the early
afternoon, I am busy with my old natives, asking questions and
making notes. The strong midday coffee has stimulated my spirits to
an extraordinary degree, the brain is active and vigorous, and work
progresses rapidly, while a pleasant warmth pervades the whole
body. Suddenly this gives place to a violent chill, forcing me to put on
my overcoat, though it is only half-past three and the afternoon sun
is at its hottest. Now the brain no longer works with such acuteness
and logical precision; more especially does it fail me in trying to
establish the syntax of the difficult Makua language on which I have
ventured, as if I had not enough to do without it. Under the
circumstances it seems advisable to take my temperature, and I do
so, to save trouble, without leaving my seat, and while going on with
my work. On examination, I find it to be 101·48°. My tutors are
abruptly dismissed and my bed set up in the baraza; a few minutes
later I am in it and treating myself internally with hot water and
lemon-juice.
Three hours later, the thermometer marks nearly 104°, and I make
them carry me back into the tent, bed and all, as I am now perspiring
heavily, and exposure to the cold wind just beginning to blow might
mean a fatal chill. I lie still for a little while, and then find, to my
great relief, that the temperature is not rising, but rather falling. This
is about 7.30 p.m. At 8 p.m. I find, to my unbounded astonishment,
that it has fallen below 98·6°, and I feel perfectly well. I read for an
hour or two, and could very well enjoy a smoke, if I had the
wherewithal—Indian cigars being out of the question.
Having no medical training, I am at a loss to account for this state
of things. It is impossible that these transitory attacks of high fever
should be malarial; it seems more probable that they are due to a
kind of sunstroke. On consulting my note-book, I become more and
more inclined to think this is the case, for these attacks regularly
follow extreme fatigue and long exposure to strong sunshine. They at
least have the advantage of being only short interruptions to my
work, as on the following morning I am always quite fresh and fit.
My treasure of a cook is suffering from an enormous hydrocele which
makes it difficult for him to get up, and Moritz is obliged to keep in
the dark on account of his inflamed eyes. Knudsen’s cook, a raw boy
from somewhere in the bush, knows still less of cooking than Omari;
consequently Nils Knudsen himself has been promoted to the vacant
post. Finding that we had come to the end of our supplies, he began
by sending to Chingulungulu for the four sucking-pigs which we had
bought from Matola and temporarily left in his charge; and when
they came up, neatly packed in a large crate, he callously slaughtered
the biggest of them. The first joint we were thoughtless enough to
entrust for roasting to Knudsen’s mshenzi cook, and it was
consequently uneatable; but we made the rest of the animal into a
jelly which we ate with great relish after weeks of underfeeding,
consuming incredible helpings of it at both midday and evening
meals. The only drawback is a certain want of variety in the tinned
vegetables. Dr. Jäger, to whom the Geographical Commission
entrusted the provisioning of the expeditions—mine as well as his
own—because he had more time on his hands than the rest of us,
seems to have laid in a huge stock of Teltow turnips,[46] an article of
food which is all very well for occasional use, but which quickly palls
when set before one every day; and we seem to have no other tins
left. There is no help for it—we must put up with the turnips; but I
am certain that, once I am home again, I shall not touch them for ten
years to come.
Amid all these minor evils, which, after all, go to make up the
genuine flavour of Africa, there is at least one cheering touch:
Knudsen has, with the dexterity of a skilled mechanic, repaired my 9
× 12 cm. camera, at least so far that I can use it with a little care.
How, in the absence of finger-nails, he was able to accomplish such a
ticklish piece of work, having no tool but a clumsy screw-driver for
taking to pieces and putting together again the complicated
mechanism of the instantaneous shutter, is still a mystery to me; but
he did it successfully. The loss of his finger-nails shows him in a light
contrasting curiously enough with the intelligence evinced by the
above operation; though, after all, it is scarcely surprising after his
ten years’ residence in the bush. One day, at Lindi, he had occasion
to wash a dog, which must have been in need of very thorough
cleansing, for the bottle handed to our friend for the purpose had an
extremely strong smell. Having performed his task in the most
conscientious manner, he perceived with some surprise that the dog
did not appear much the better for it, and was further surprised by
finding his own nails ulcerating away in the course of the next few
days. “How was I to know that carbolic acid has to be diluted?” he
mutters indignantly, from time to time, with a troubled gaze at his
mutilated finger-tips.
Since we came to Newala we have been making excursions in all
directions through the surrounding country, in accordance with old
habit, and also because the akida Sefu did not get together the tribal
elders from whom I wanted information so speedily as he had
promised. There is, however, no harm done, as, even if seen only
from the outside, the country and people are interesting enough.
The Makonde plateau is like a large rectangular table rounded off
at the corners. Measured from the Indian Ocean to Newala, it is
about seventy-five miles long, and between the Rovuma and the
Lukuledi it averages fifty miles in breadth, so that its superficial area
is about two-thirds of that of the kingdom of Saxony. The surface,
however, is not level, but uniformly inclined from its south-western
edge to the ocean. From the upper edge, on which Newala lies, the
eye ranges for many miles east and north-east, without encountering
any obstacle, over the Makonde bush. It is a green sea, from which
here and there thick clouds of smoke rise, to show that it, too, is
inhabited by men who carry on their tillage like so many other
primitive peoples, by cutting down and burning the bush, and
manuring with the ashes. Even in the radiant light of a tropical day
such a fire is a grand sight.
Much less effective is the impression produced just now by the
great western plain as seen from the edge of the plateau. As often as
time permits, I stroll along this edge, sometimes in one direction,
sometimes in another, in the hope of finding the air clear enough to
let me enjoy the view; but I have always been disappointed.
Wherever one looks, clouds of smoke rise from the burning bush,
and the air is full of smoke and vapour. It is a pity, for under more
favourable circumstances the panorama of the whole country up to
the distant Majeje hills must be truly magnificent. It is of little use
taking photographs now, and an outline sketch gives a very poor idea
of the scenery. In one of these excursions I went out of my way to
make a personal attempt on the Makonde bush. The present edge of
the plateau is the result of a far-reaching process of destruction
through erosion and denudation. The Makonde strata are
everywhere cut into by ravines, which, though short, are hundreds of
yards in depth. In consequence of the loose stratification of these
beds, not only are the walls of these ravines nearly vertical, but their
upper end is closed by an equally steep escarpment, so that the
western edge of the Makonde plateau is hemmed in by a series of
deep, basin-like valleys. In order to get from one side of such a ravine
to the other, I cut my way through the bush with a dozen of my men.
It was a very open part, with more grass than scrub, but even so the
short stretch of less than two hundred yards was very hard work; at
the end of it the men’s calicoes were in rags and they themselves
bleeding from hundreds of scratches, while even our strong khaki
suits had not escaped scatheless.
NATIVE PATH THROUGH THE MAKONDE BUSH, NEAR

MAHUTA
I see increasing reason to believe that the view formed some time
back as to the origin of the Makonde bush is the correct one. I have
no doubt that it is not a natural product, but the result of human
occupation. Those parts of the high country where man—as a very
slight amount of practice enables the eye to perceive at once—has not
yet penetrated with axe and hoe, are still occupied by a splendid
timber forest quite able to sustain a comparison with our mixed
forests in Germany. But wherever man has once built his hut or tilled
his field, this horrible bush springs up. Every phase of this process
may be seen in the course of a couple of hours’ walk along the main
road. From the bush to right or left, one hears the sound of the axe—
not from one spot only, but from several directions at once. A few
steps further on, we can see what is taking place. The brush has been
cut down and piled up in heaps to the height of a yard or more,
between which the trunks of the large trees stand up like the last
pillars of a magnificent ruined building. These, too, present a
melancholy spectacle: the destructive Makonde have ringed them—
cut a broad strip of bark all round to ensure their dying off—and also
piled up pyramids of brush round them. Father and son, mother and
son-in-law, are chopping away perseveringly in the background—too
busy, almost, to look round at the white stranger, who usually excites
so much interest. If you pass by the same place a week later, the piles
of brushwood have disappeared and a thick layer of ashes has taken
the place of the green forest. The large trees stretch their
smouldering trunks and branches in dumb accusation to heaven—if
they have not already fallen and been more or less reduced to ashes,
perhaps only showing as a white stripe on the dark ground.
This work of destruction is carried out by the Makonde alike on the
virgin forest and on the bush which has sprung up on sites already
cultivated and deserted. In the second case they are saved the trouble
of burning the large trees, these being entirely absent in the
secondary bush.
After burning this piece of forest ground and loosening it with the
hoe, the native sows his corn and plants his vegetables. All over the
country, he goes in for bed-culture, which requires, and, in fact,
receives, the most careful attention. Weeds are nowhere tolerated in
the south of German East Africa. The crops may fail on the plains,
where droughts are frequent, but never on the plateau with its
abundant rains and heavy dews. Its fortunate inhabitants even have
the satisfaction of seeing the proud Wayao and Wamakua working
for them as labourers, driven by hunger to serve where they were
accustomed to rule.
But the light, sandy soil is soon exhausted, and would yield no
harvest the second year if cultivated twice running. This fact has
been familiar to the native for ages; consequently he provides in
time, and, while his crop is growing, prepares the next plot with axe
and firebrand. Next year he plants this with his various crops and
lets the first piece lie fallow. For a short time it remains waste and
desolate; then nature steps in to repair the destruction wrought by
man; a thousand new growths spring out of the exhausted soil, and
even the old stumps put forth fresh shoots. Next year the new growth
is up to one’s knees, and in a few years more it is that terrible,
impenetrable bush, which maintains its position till the black
occupier of the land has made the round of all the available sites and
come back to his starting point.
The Makonde are, body and soul, so to speak, one with this bush.
According to my Yao informants, indeed, their name means nothing
else but “bush people.” Their own tradition says that they have been
settled up here for a very long time, but to my surprise they laid great
stress on an original immigration. Their old homes were in the
south-east, near Mikindani and the mouth of the Rovuma, whence
their peaceful forefathers were driven by the continual raids of the
Sakalavas from Madagascar and the warlike Shirazis[47] of the coast,
to take refuge on the almost inaccessible plateau. I have studied
African ethnology for twenty years, but the fact that changes of
population in this apparently quiet and peaceable corner of the earth
could have been occasioned by outside enterprises taking place on
the high seas, was completely new to me. It is, no doubt, however,
correct.
The charming tribal legend of the Makonde—besides informing us
of other interesting matters—explains why they have to live in the
thickest of the bush and a long way from the edge of the plateau,
instead of making their permanent homes beside the purling brooks
and springs of the low country.
“The place where the tribe originated is Mahuta, on the southern
side of the plateau towards the Rovuma, where of old time there was
nothing but thick bush. Out of this bush came a man who never
washed himself or shaved his head, and who ate and drank but little.
He went out and made a human figure from the wood of a tree
growing in the open country, which he took home to his abode in the
bush and there set it upright. In the night this image came to life and
was a woman. The man and woman went down together to the
Rovuma to wash themselves. Here the woman gave birth to a still-
born child. They left that place and passed over the high land into the
valley of the Mbemkuru, where the woman had another child, which
was also born dead. Then they returned to the high bush country of
Mahuta, where the third child was born, which lived and grew up. In
course of time, the couple had many more children, and called
themselves Wamatanda. These were the ancestral stock of the
Makonde, also called Wamakonde,[48] i.e., aborigines. Their
forefather, the man from the bush, gave his children the command to
bury their dead upright, in memory of the mother of their race who
was cut out of wood and awoke to life when standing upright. He also
warned them against settling in the valleys and near large streams,
for sickness and death dwelt there. They were to make it a rule to
have their huts at least an hour’s walk from the nearest watering-
place; then their children would thrive and escape illness.”
The explanation of the name Makonde given by my informants is
somewhat different from that contained in the above legend, which I
extract from a little book (small, but packed with information), by
Pater Adams, entitled Lindi und sein Hinterland. Otherwise, my
results agree exactly with the statements of the legend. Washing?
Hapana—there is no such thing. Why should they do so? As it is, the
supply of water scarcely suffices for cooking and drinking; other
people do not wash, so why should the Makonde distinguish himself
by such needless eccentricity? As for shaving the head, the short,
woolly crop scarcely needs it,[49] so the second ancestral precept is
likewise easy enough to follow. Beyond this, however, there is
nothing ridiculous in the ancestor’s advice. I have obtained from
various local artists a fairly large number of figures carved in wood,
ranging from fifteen to twenty-three inches in height, and
representing women belonging to the great group of the Mavia,
Makonde, and Matambwe tribes. The carving is remarkably well
done and renders the female type with great accuracy, especially the
keloid ornamentation, to be described later on. As to the object and
meaning of their works the sculptors either could or (more probably)
would tell me nothing, and I was forced to content myself with the
scanty information vouchsafed by one man, who said that the figures
were merely intended to represent the nembo—the artificial
deformations of pelele, ear-discs, and keloids. The legend recorded
by Pater Adams places these figures in a new light. They must surely
be more than mere dolls; and we may even venture to assume that
they are—though the majority of present-day Makonde are probably
unaware of the fact—representations of the tribal ancestress.
The references in the legend to the descent from Mahuta to the
Rovuma, and to a journey across the highlands into the Mbekuru
valley, undoubtedly indicate the previous history of the tribe, the
travels of the ancestral pair typifying the migrations of their
descendants. The descent to the neighbouring Rovuma valley, with
its extraordinary fertility and great abundance of game, is intelligible
at a glance—but the crossing of the Lukuledi depression, the ascent
to the Rondo Plateau and the descent to the Mbemkuru, also lie
within the bounds of probability, for all these districts have exactly
the same character as the extreme south. Now, however, comes a
point of especial interest for our bacteriological age. The primitive
Makonde did not enjoy their lives in the marshy river-valleys.
Disease raged among them, and many died. It was only after they
had returned to their original home near Mahuta, that the health
conditions of these people improved. We are very apt to think of the
African as a stupid person whose ignorance of nature is only equalled
by his fear of it, and who looks on all mishaps as caused by evil
spirits and malignant natural powers. It is much more correct to
assume in this case that the people very early learnt to distinguish
districts infested with malaria from those where it is absent.
This knowledge is crystallized in the
ancestral warning against settling in the
valleys and near the great waters, the
dwelling-places of disease and death. At the
same time, for security against the hostile
Mavia south of the Rovuma, it was enacted
that every settlement must be not less than a
certain distance from the southern edge of the
plateau. Such in fact is their mode of life at the
present day. It is not such a bad one, and
certainly they are both safer and more
comfortable than the Makua, the recent
intruders from the south, who have made USUAL METHOD OF
good their footing on the western edge of the CLOSING HUT-DOOR
plateau, extending over a fairly wide belt of
country. Neither Makua nor Makonde show in their dwellings
anything of the size and comeliness of the Yao houses in the plain,
especially at Masasi, Chingulungulu and Zuza’s. Jumbe Chauro, a
Makonde hamlet not far from Newala, on the road to Mahuta, is the
most important settlement of the tribe I have yet seen, and has fairly
spacious huts. But how slovenly is their construction compared with
the palatial residences of the elephant-hunters living in the plain.
The roofs are still more untidy than in the general run of huts during
the dry season, the walls show here and there the scanty beginnings
or the lamentable remains of the mud plastering, and the interior is a
veritable dog-kennel; dirt, dust and disorder everywhere. A few huts
only show any attempt at division into rooms, and this consists
merely of very roughly-made bamboo partitions. In one point alone
have I noticed any indication of progress—in the method of fastening
the door. Houses all over the south are secured in a simple but
ingenious manner. The door consists of a set of stout pieces of wood
or bamboo, tied with bark-string to two cross-pieces, and moving in
two grooves round one of the door-posts, so as to open inwards. If
the owner wishes to leave home, he takes two logs as thick as a man’s
upper arm and about a yard long. One of these is placed obliquely
against the middle of the door from the inside, so as to form an angle
of from 60° to 75° with the ground. He then places the second piece
horizontally across the first, pressing it downward with all his might.
It is kept in place by two strong posts planted in the ground a few
inches inside the door. This fastening is absolutely safe, but of course
cannot be applied to both doors at once, otherwise how could the
owner leave or enter his house? I have not yet succeeded in finding
out how the back door is fastened.
MAKONDE LOCK AND KEY AT JUMBE CHAURO

This is the general way of closing a house. The Makonde at Jumbe
Chauro, however, have a much more complicated, solid and original
one. Here, too, the door is as already described, except that there is
only one post on the inside, standing by itself about six inches from
one side of the doorway. Opposite this post is a hole in the wall just
large enough to admit a man’s arm. The door is closed inside by a
large wooden bolt passing through a hole in this post and pressing
with its free end against the door. The other end has three holes into
which fit three pegs running in vertical grooves inside the post. The
door is opened with a wooden key about a foot long, somewhat
curved and sloped off at the butt; the other end has three pegs
corresponding to the holes, in the bolt, so that, when it is thrust
through the hole in the wall and inserted into the rectangular
opening in the post, the pegs can be lifted and the bolt drawn out.[50]
MODE OF INSERTING THE KEY
With no small pride first one householder and then a second

showed me on the spot the action of this greatest invention of the
Makonde Highlands. To both with an admiring exclamation of
“Vizuri sana!” (“Very fine!”). I expressed the wish to take back these
marvels with me to Ulaya, to show the Wazungu what clever fellows
the Makonde are. Scarcely five minutes after my return to camp at
Newala, the two men came up sweating under the weight of two
heavy logs which they laid down at my feet, handing over at the same
time the keys of the fallen fortress. Arguing, logically enough, that if
the key was wanted, the lock would be wanted with it, they had taken
their axes and chopped down the posts—as it never occurred to them
to dig them out of the ground and so bring them intact. Thus I have
two badly damaged specimens, and the owners, instead of praise,
come in for a blowing-up.
The Makua huts in the environs of Newala are especially
miserable; their more than slovenly construction reminds one of the
temporary erections of the Makua at Hatia’s, though the people here
have not been concerned in a war. It must therefore be due to
congenital idleness, or else to the absence of a powerful chief. Even
the baraza at Mlipa’s, a short hour’s walk south-east of Newala,
shares in this general neglect. While public buildings in this country
are usually looked after more or less carefully, this is in evident
danger of being blown over by the first strong easterly gale. The only
attractive object in this whole district is the grave of the late chief
Mlipa. I visited it in the morning, while the sun was still trying with
partial success to break through the rolling mists, and the circular
grove of tall euphorbias, which, with a broken pot, is all that marks
the old king’s resting-place, impressed one with a touch of pathos.
Even my very materially-minded carriers seemed to feel something
of the sort, for instead of their usual ribald songs, they chanted
solemnly, as we marched on through the dense green of the Makonde
bush:—
“We shall arrive with the great master; we stand in a row and have
no fear about getting our food and our money from the Serkali (the
Government). We are not afraid; we are going along with the great
master, the lion; we are going down to the coast and back.”
With regard to the characteristic features of the various tribes here
on the western edge of the plateau, I can arrive at no other
conclusion than the one already come to in the plain, viz., that it is
impossible for anyone but a trained anthropologist to assign any
given individual at once to his proper tribe. In fact, I think that even
an anthropological specialist, after the most careful examination,
might find it a difficult task to decide. The whole congeries of peoples
collected in the region bounded on the west by the great Central
African rift, Tanganyika and Nyasa, and on the east by the Indian
Ocean, are closely related to each other—some of their languages are
only distinguished from one another as dialects of the same speech,
and no doubt all the tribes present the same shape of skull and
structure of skeleton. Thus, surely, there can be no very striking
differences in outward appearance.
Even did such exist, I should have no time
to concern myself with them, for day after day,
I have to see or hear, as the case may be—in
any case to grasp and record—an
extraordinary number of ethnographic
phenomena. I am almost disposed to think it
fortunate that some departments of inquiry, at
least, are barred by external circumstances.
Chief among these is the subject of iron-
working. We are apt to think of Africa as a
country where iron ore is everywhere, so to
speak, to be picked up by the roadside, and
where it would be quite surprising if the
inhabitants had not learnt to smelt the
material ready to their hand. In fact, the
knowledge of this art ranges all over the
continent, from the Kabyles in the north to the
Kafirs in the south. Here between the Rovuma
and the Lukuledi the conditions are not so
favourable. According to the statements of the
Makonde, neither ironstone nor any other
form of iron ore is known to them. They have
not therefore advanced to the art of smelting
the metal, but have hitherto bought all their
THE ANCESTRESS OF
THE MAKONDE
iron implements from neighbouring tribes.
Even in the plain the inhabitants are not much
better off. Only one man now living is said to
understand the art of smelting iron. This old fundi lives close to
Huwe, that isolated, steep-sided block of granite which rises out of
the green solitude between Masasi and Chingulungulu, and whose
jagged and splintered top meets the traveller’s eye everywhere. While
still at Masasi I wished to see this man at work, but was told that,
frightened by the rising, he had retired across the Rovuma, though
he would soon return. All subsequent inquiries as to whether the
fundi had come back met with the genuine African answer, “Bado”
(“Not yet”).
BRAZIER
Some consolation was afforded me by a brassfounder, whom I

came across in the bush near Akundonde’s. This man is the favourite
of women, and therefore no doubt of the gods; he welds the glittering
brass rods purchased at the coast into those massive, heavy rings
which, on the wrists and ankles of the local fair ones, continually give
me fresh food for admiration. Like every decent master-craftsman he
had all his tools with him, consisting of a pair of bellows, three
crucibles and a hammer—nothing more, apparently. He was quite
willing to show his skill, and in a twinkling had fixed his bellows on
the ground. They are simply two goat-skins, taken off whole, the four
legs being closed by knots, while the upper opening, intended to
admit the air, is kept stretched by two pieces of wood. At the lower
end of the skin a smaller opening is left into which a wooden tube is
stuck. The fundi has quickly borrowed a heap of wood-embers from
the nearest hut; he then fixes the free ends of the two tubes into an
earthen pipe, and clamps them to the ground by means of a bent
piece of wood. Now he fills one of his small clay crucibles, the dross
on which shows that they have been long in use, with the yellow
material, places it in the midst of the embers, which, at present are
only faintly glimmering, and begins his work. In quick alternation
the smith’s two hands move up and down with the open ends of the
bellows; as he raises his hand he holds the slit wide open, so as to let
the air enter the skin bag unhindered. In pressing it down he closes
the bag, and the air puffs through the bamboo tube and clay pipe into
the fire, which quickly burns up. The smith, however, does not keep
on with this work, but beckons to another man, who relieves him at
the bellows, while he takes some more tools out of a large skin pouch
carried on his back. I look on in wonder as, with a smooth round
stick about the thickness of a finger, he bores a few vertical holes into
the clean sand of the soil. This should not be difficult, yet the man
seems to be taking great pains over it. Then he fastens down to the
ground, with a couple of wooden clamps, a neat little trough made by
splitting a joint of bamboo in half, so that the ends are closed by the
two knots. At last the yellow metal has attained the right consistency,
and the fundi lifts the crucible from the fire by means of two sticks
split at the end to serve as tongs. A short swift turn to the left—a
tilting of the crucible—and the molten brass, hissing and giving forth
clouds of smoke, flows first into the bamboo mould and then into the
holes in the ground.
The technique of this backwoods craftsman may not be very far
advanced, but it cannot be denied that he knows how to obtain an
adequate result by the simplest means. The ladies of highest rank in
this country—that is to say, those who can afford it, wear two kinds
of these massive brass rings, one cylindrical, the other semicircular
in section. The latter are cast in the most ingenious way in the
bamboo mould, the former in the circular hole in the sand. It is quite
a simple matter for the fundi to fit these bars to the limbs of his fair
customers; with a few light strokes of his hammer he bends the
pliable brass round arm or ankle without further inconvenience to
the wearer.
SHAPING THE POT
SMOOTHING WITH MAIZE-COB
CUTTING THE EDGE

FINISHING THE BOTTOM
LAST SMOOTHING BEFORE

BURNING
FIRING THE BRUSH-PILE

LIGHTING THE FARTHER SIDE OF
THE PILE
TURNING THE RED-HOT VESSEL
NYASA WOMAN MAKING POTS AT MASASI

Pottery is an art which must always and everywhere excite the
interest of the student, just because it is so intimately connected with
the development of human culture, and because its relics are one of
the principal factors in the reconstruction of our own condition in
prehistoric times. I shall always remember with pleasure the two or
three afternoons at Masasi when Salim Matola’s mother, a slightly-
built, graceful, pleasant-looking woman, explained to me with
touching patience, by means of concrete illustrations, the ceramic art
of her people. The only implements for this primitive process were a
lump of clay in her left hand, and in the right a calabash containing
the following valuables: the fragment of a maize-cob stripped of all
its grains, a smooth, oval pebble, about the size of a pigeon’s egg, a
few chips of gourd-shell, a bamboo splinter about the length of one’s
hand, a small shell, and a bunch of some herb resembling spinach.
Nothing more. The woman scraped with the
shell a round, shallow hole in the soft, fine
sand of the soil, and, when an active young
girl had filled the calabash with water for her,
she began to knead the clay. As if by magic it
gradually assumed the shape of a rough but
already well-shaped vessel, which only wanted
a little touching up with the instruments
before mentioned. I looked out with the
MAKUA WOMAN closest attention for any indication of the use
MAKING A POT. of the potter’s wheel, in however rudimentary
SHOWS THE a form, but no—hapana (there is none). The
BEGINNINGS OF THE embryo pot stood firmly in its little
POTTER’S WHEEL
depression, and the woman walked round it in
a stooping posture, whether she was removing
small stones or similar foreign bodies with the maize-cob, smoothing
the inner or outer surface with the splinter of bamboo, or later, after
letting it dry for a day, pricking in the ornamentation with a pointed
bit of gourd-shell, or working out the bottom, or cutting the edge
with a sharp bamboo knife, or giving the last touches to the finished
vessel. This occupation of the women is infinitely toilsome, but it is
without doubt an accurate reproduction of the process in use among
our ancestors of the Neolithic and Bronze ages.
There is no doubt that the invention of pottery, an item in human
progress whose importance cannot be over-estimated, is due to
women. Rough, coarse and unfeeling, the men of the horde range
over the countryside. When the united cunning of the hunters has
succeeded in killing the game; not one of them thinks of carrying
home the spoil. A bright fire, kindled by a vigorous wielding of the
drill, is crackling beside them; the animal has been cleaned and cut
up secundum artem, and, after a slight singeing, will soon disappear
under their sharp teeth; no one all this time giving a single thought
to wife or child.
To what shifts, on the other hand, the primitive wife, and still more
the primitive mother, was put! Not even prehistoric stomachs could
endure an unvarying diet of raw food. Something or other suggested
the beneficial effect of hot water on the majority of approved but
indigestible dishes. Perhaps a neighbour had tried holding the hard
roots or tubers over the fire in a calabash filled with water—or maybe
an ostrich-egg-shell, or a hastily improvised vessel of bark. They
became much softer and more palatable than they had previously
been; but, unfortunately, the vessel could not stand the fire and got
charred on the outside. That can be remedied, thought our
ancestress, and plastered a layer of wet clay round a similar vessel.
This is an improvement; the cooking utensil remains uninjured, but
the heat of the fire has shrunk it, so that it is loose in its shell. The
next step is to detach it, so, with a firm grip and a jerk, shell and
kernel are separated, and pottery is invented. Perhaps, however, the
discovery which led to an intelligent use of the burnt-clay shell, was
made in a slightly different way. Ostrich-eggs and calabashes are not
to be found in every part of the world, but everywhere mankind has
arrived at the art of making baskets out of pliant materials, such as
bark, bast, strips of palm-leaf, supple twigs, etc. Our inventor has no
water-tight vessel provided by nature. “Never mind, let us line the
basket with clay.” This answers the purpose, but alas! the basket gets
burnt over the blazing fire, the woman watches the process of
cooking with increasing uneasiness, fearing a leak, but no leak
appears. The food, done to a turn, is eaten with peculiar relish; and
the cooking-vessel is examined, half in curiosity, half in satisfaction
at the result. The plastic clay is now hard as stone, and at the same
time looks exceedingly well, for the neat plaiting of the burnt basket
is traced all over it in a pretty pattern. Thus, simultaneously with
pottery, its ornamentation was invented.
Primitive woman has another claim to respect. It was the man,
roving abroad, who invented the art of producing fire at will, but the
woman, unable to imitate him in this, has been a Vestal from the
earliest times. Nothing gives so much trouble as the keeping alight of
the smouldering brand, and, above all, when all the men are absent
from the camp. Heavy rain-clouds gather, already the first large
drops are falling, the first gusts of the storm rage over the plain. The
little flame, a greater anxiety to the woman than her own children,
flickers unsteadily in the blast. What is to be done? A sudden thought
occurs to her, and in an instant she has constructed a primitive hut
out of strips of bark, to protect the flame against rain and wind.
This, or something very like it, was the way in which the principle
of the house was discovered; and even the most hardened misogynist
cannot fairly refuse a woman the credit of it. The protection of the
hearth-fire from the weather is the germ from which the human
dwelling was evolved. Men had little, if any share, in this forward
step, and that only at a late stage. Even at the present day, the
plastering of the housewall with clay and the manufacture of pottery
are exclusively the women’s business. These are two very significant
survivals. Our European kitchen-garden, too, is originally a woman’s
invention, and the hoe, the primitive instrument of agriculture, is,
characteristically enough, still used in this department. But the
noblest achievement which we owe to the other sex is unquestionably
the art of cookery. Roasting alone—the oldest process—is one for
which men took the hint (a very obvious one) from nature. It must
have been suggested by the scorched carcase of some animal
overtaken by the destructive forest-fires. But boiling—the process of
improving organic substances by the help of water heated to boiling-
point—is a much later discovery. It is so recent that it has not even
yet penetrated to all parts of the world. The Polynesians understand
how to steam food, that is, to cook it, neatly wrapped in leaves, in a
hole in the earth between hot stones, the air being excluded, and
(sometimes) a few drops of water sprinkled on the stones; but they
do not understand boiling.
To come back from this digression, we find that the slender Nyasa
woman has, after once more carefully examining the finished pot,
put it aside in the shade to dry. On the following day she sends me
word by her son, Salim Matola, who is always on hand, that she is
going to do the burning, and, on coming out of my house, I find her
already hard at work. She has spread on the ground a layer of very
dry sticks, about as thick as one’s thumb, has laid the pot (now of a
yellowish-grey colour) on them, and is piling brushwood round it.
My faithful Pesa mbili, the mnyampara, who has been standing by,
most obligingly, with a lighted stick, now hands it to her. Both of
them, blowing steadily, light the pile on the lee side, and, when the
flame begins to catch, on the weather side also. Soon the whole is in a
blaze, but the dry fuel is quickly consumed and the fire dies down, so
that we see the red-hot vessel rising from the ashes. The woman
turns it continually with a long stick, sometimes one way and
sometimes another, so that it may be evenly heated all over. In
twenty minutes she rolls it out of the ash-heap, takes up the bundle
of spinach, which has been lying for two days in a jar of water, and
sprinkles the red-hot clay with it. The places where the drops fall are
marked by black spots on the uniform reddish-brown surface. With a
sigh of relief, and with visible satisfaction, the woman rises to an
erect position; she is standing just in a line between me and the fire,
from which a cloud of smoke is just rising: I press the ball of my
camera, the shutter clicks—the apotheosis is achieved! Like a
priestess, representative of her inventive sex, the graceful woman
stands: at her feet the hearth-fire she has given us beside her the
invention she has devised for us, in the background the home she has
built for us.
At Newala, also, I have had the manufacture of pottery carried on
in my presence. Technically the process is better than that already
described, for here we find the beginnings of the potter’s wheel,
which does not seem to exist in the plains; at least I have seen
nothing of the sort. The artist, a frightfully stupid Makua woman, did
not make a depression in the ground to receive the pot she was about
to shape, but used instead a large potsherd. Otherwise, she went to
work in much the same way as Salim’s mother, except that she saved
herself the trouble of walking round and round her work by squatting
at her ease and letting the pot and potsherd rotate round her; this is
surely the first step towards a machine. But it does not follow that
the pot was improved by the process. It is true that it was beautifully
rounded and presented a very creditable appearance when finished,
but the numerous large and small vessels which I have seen, and, in
part, collected, in the “less advanced” districts, are no less so. We
moderns imagine that instruments of precision are necessary to
produce excellent results. Go to the prehistoric collections of our
museums and look at the pots, urns and bowls of our ancestors in the
dim ages of the past, and you will at once perceive your error.
MAKING LONGITUDINAL CUT IN
BARK
DRAWING THE BARK OFF THE LOG
REMOVING THE OUTER BARK

BEATING THE BARK
WORKING THE BARK-CLOTH AFTER BEATING, TO MAKE IT

SOFT
MANUFACTURE OF BARK-CLOTH AT NEWALA

To-day, nearly the whole population of German East Africa is
clothed in imported calico. This was not always the case; even now in
some parts of the north dressed skins are still the prevailing wear,
and in the north-western districts—east and north of Lake
Tanganyika—lies a zone where bark-cloth has not yet been
superseded. Probably not many generations have passed since such
bark fabrics and kilts of skins were the only clothing even in the
south. Even to-day, large quantities of this bright-red or drab
material are still to be found; but if we wish to see it, we must look in
the granaries and on the drying stages inside the native huts, where
it serves less ambitious uses as wrappings for those seeds and fruits
which require to be packed with special care. The salt produced at
Masasi, too, is packed for transport to a distance in large sheets of
bark-cloth. Wherever I found it in any degree possible, I studied the
process of making this cloth. The native requisitioned for the
purpose arrived, carrying a log between two and three yards long and
as thick as his thigh, and nothing else except a curiously-shaped
mallet and the usual long, sharp and pointed knife which all men and
boys wear in a belt at their backs without a sheath—horribile dictu!
[51]
Silently he squats down before me, and with two rapid cuts has
drawn a couple of circles round the log some two yards apart, and
slits the bark lengthwise between them with the point of his knife.
With evident care, he then scrapes off the outer rind all round the
log, so that in a quarter of an hour the inner red layer of the bark
shows up brightly-coloured between the two untouched ends. With
some trouble and much caution, he now loosens the bark at one end,
and opens the cylinder. He then stands up, takes hold of the free
edge with both hands, and turning it inside out, slowly but steadily
pulls it off in one piece. Now comes the troublesome work of
scraping all superfluous particles of outer bark from the outside of
the long, narrow piece of material, while the inner side is carefully
scrutinised for defective spots. At last it is ready for beating. Having
signalled to a friend, who immediately places a bowl of water beside
him, the artificer damps his sheet of bark all over, seizes his mallet,
lays one end of the stuff on the smoothest spot of the log, and
hammers away slowly but continuously. “Very simple!” I think to
myself. “Why, I could do that, too!”—but I am forced to change my
opinions a little later on; for the beating is quite an art, if the fabric is
not to be beaten to pieces. To prevent the breaking of the fibres, the
stuff is several times folded across, so as to interpose several
thicknesses between the mallet and the block. At last the required
state is reached, and the fundi seizes the sheet, still folded, by both
ends, and wrings it out, or calls an assistant to take one end while he
holds the other. The cloth produced in this way is not nearly so fine
and uniform in texture as the famous Uganda bark-cloth, but it is
quite soft, and, above all, cheap.
Now, too, I examine the mallet. My craftsman has been using the
simpler but better form of this implement, a conical block of some
hard wood, its base—the striking surface—being scored across and
across with more or less deeply-cut grooves, and the handle stuck
into a hole in the middle. The other and earlier form of mallet is
shaped in the same way, but the head is fastened by an ingenious
network of bark strips into the split bamboo serving as a handle. The
observation so often made, that ancient customs persist longest in
connection with religious ceremonies and in the life of children, here
finds confirmation. As we shall soon see, bark-cloth is still worn
during the unyago,[52] having been prepared with special solemn
ceremonies; and many a mother, if she has no other garment handy,
will still put her little one into a kilt of bark-cloth, which, after all,
looks better, besides being more in keeping with its African
surroundings, than the ridiculous bit of print from Ulaya.
MAKUA WOMEN

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The Domestic Dog: Its Evolution,

Behavior and Interactions with People

The Domestic Dog

© in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org

© in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org

20 Mar 2017 at 17:49:49, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use,

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2.2 Precursors of the dog

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Figure 2.1 Ventral view of skulls identiﬁed as

(a) “dog,” and (b) and (c) wolves. (Reprinted

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2.3 Morphology and domestication

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behavior and the ability to exist in the new, anthropogenic environment.”

2.4 The first dogs

Figure 2.2 The right maxilla identiﬁed as

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Figure 2.3 B urial of a human with a puppy

from the Natuﬁan site of Ein Mallaha, Israel.

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2.5 Origin of dogs in the Americas

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2.6 Origin of dogs in Africa south of the Sahara

2.7 Origin of the dingo and New Guinea singing dog

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3.2 The wolf, ancestor of the dog

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Figure 3.1 Canidae phylogeny

Island fox with estimated dates of

South American species

South American gray fox

African wild dog

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Gray wolf (Canis lupus) Gray wolf (Canis lupus)

3.3 The human handprint: Canine domestication

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Box 3.1 Natural versus artificial selection

Charles Darwin discussed artificial selection as an analogue of evolution by natural selection

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100,000 ya: Ancestral wolf population

13,000−45,000 ya: Earliest

12,000−9,500 ya: Stone Age

5,000 ya: Dingoes to Australia

circa 1800s: “Victorian Era”,

Today Feral and semi- Modern dog breeds

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Newala, too, suffers from the distance of its water-supply—at least

The water-supply of New Newala is in the bottom of the valley,

NATIVE PATH THROUGH THE MAKONDE BUSH, NEAR

MAKONDE LOCK AND KEY AT JUMBE CHAURO

MODE OF INSERTING THE KEY