HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY article

Front. Psychol., 13 September 2021 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.695116

Did Dog Domestication Contribute to Language Evolution?

Antonio Benítez-Burraco1*, Daniela Pörtl2 and Christoph Jung3

1Department of Spanish, Linguistics, and Theory of Literature (Linguistics), Faculty of Philology, University of Seville, Seville, Spain

2Psychiatric Department, Saale-Unstrut Klinikum, Teaching Hospital Leipzig and Jena Universities, Naumburg, Germany

3Petwatch, Halle, Germany

Different factors seemingly
account for the emergence of present-day languages in our species. Human self-domestication has been recently invoked as one important force favoring language complexity mostly via a cultural mechanism. Because our self-domestication ultimately resulted from selection for less aggressive behavior and increased prosocial behavior, any evolutionary or cultural change impacting on aggression levels is expected to have fostered this process. Here, we hypothesize about a parallel domestication of humans and dogs, and more specifically, about a positive effect of our interaction with dogs on human self-domestication, and ultimately, on aspects of language evolution, through the mechanisms involved in the control of aggression. We review evidence of diverse sort (ethological mostly, but also archeological, genetic, and physiological) supporting such an effect and propose some ways of testing our hypothesis.

On Wednesday, December 16, 2020 at 8:39:39 AM UTC-5, Daud Deden wrote:
> Dogs are humans' oldest companions, DNA shows
> Paul Rincon 29.10.20 Science editor BBC News website
>
> A study of dog DNA has shown that our "best friend" in the animal world may also be our oldest one:
> dog domestication can be traced back 11 ka (end last Ice Age).
> Dogs were widespread across the northern hemisphere 11 ka, and had already split into 5 different types.
> Despite the expansion of European dogs during the colonial era, traces of these ancient indigenous breeds survive today in the Americas, Asia, Africa & Oceania.
> The research fills in some of the gaps in the natural history of our close animal companions.
> Pontus Skoglund (co-author):
> "Dogs are really unique in being this quite strange thing if you think about it, when all people were still hunter gatherers, they domesticate what is really a wild carnivore - wolves are pretty frightening in many parts of the world.
> "The question of why did people do that? How did that come about? That's what we're ultimately interested in."
> To some extent, dog genetic patterns mirror human ones, because people took their animal companions with them when they moved. But there were also important differences, e.g.
> early European dogs were initially diverse, appearing to originate from 2 very distinct populations (related to Near Eastern / Siberian dogs).
> But at some point (onset Bronze Age?), a single dog lineage spread widely, and replaced all other dog populations on the continent.
> This pattern has no counterpart in the genetic patterns of people from Europe.
> Anders Bergström (lead author):
> "If we look back > 4 or 5 ka, we can see that Europe was a very diverse place when it came to dogs.
> The European dogs we see today come in an extraordinary array of shapes & forms,
> but genetically they derive from only a very narrow subset of the diversity that used to exist."
> They analysed the whole genomes (DNA) of 27 ancient dog remains ass.x a variety of archaeological cultures, and compared these to each other & to modern dogs.
>
> Results:
> breeds like the Rhodesian Ridgeback (SA) & the Chihuahua & Xoloitzcuintli (Mexico) retain genetic traces of ancient indigenous dogs from the region.
> The ancestry of dogs in E.Asia is complex.
> Chinese breeds seem to derive some of their ancestry from animals like the Australian dingo & New Guinea singing-dog,
> the rest come from Europe & the Russian steppe.
> The New Guinea singing-dog is so named because of its melodious howl, characterised by a sharp increase in pitch at the start.
>
> Greger Larson (co-author):
> "Dogs are our oldest & closest animal partner.
> Using DNA from ancient dogs is showing us just how far back our shared history goes, and will ultimately help us understand when & where this deep relationship began."
> Dogs are thought to have evolved from wolves that ventured into human camps, perhaps sniffing around for food.
> As they were tamed, they could then have served humans as hunting companions or guards.
> The results suggest:
> all dogs derive from a single extinct wolf population - or perhaps a few very closely related ones.
> If there were multiple domestication events around the world, these other lineages did not contribute much DNA to later dogs.
> Skoglund said it was unclear when or where the initial domestication occurred:
> "Dog history has been so dynamic, that you can't really count on it still being there to readily read in their DNA.
> We really don't know - that's the fascinating thing about it."
> Many animals (e.g. cats) probably became our pets when humans settled down to farm a little over 6 ka.
> Cats were probably useful for controlling pests (e.g. mice), attracted by the waste generated by dense settlements.
> This places their domestication in cradles of agriculture, e.g. the Near East:
> "For dogs, it could almost have been anywhere: cold Siberia, the warm Near East, SE.East Asia.
> All of these are possibilities in my mind?"