Origin of the domestic dog Neolithic dog specimens with sequences from over 5,000 dogs and wolves. These Neolithic dog specimens included a dog sample from the Early Neolithic site in Herxheim, Germany dated 7,000 YBP, one from the Late Neolithic site of Kirschbaum (Cherry Tree) Cave near Forchheim, Germany dated 4,700 YBP, and one found in the Late Neolithic passage grave at Newgrange, Ireland dated 4,800 YBP. The study calculated a mutation rate for the 7,000 YBP Neolithic dog and found that it matched the mutation rate of the Taimyr-1 specimen, and noted that this also matched the mutation rate for the Newgrange dog that
Origin of the domestic dog these experiments provided a mechanism to explain how the animal domestication process could have begun without deliberate human forethought and action. The genetic difference between domestic and wild populations can be framed within two considerations. The first distinguishes between domestication traits that are presumed to have been essential at the early stages of domestication, and improvement traits that have appeared since the split between wild and domestic populations. Domestication traits are generally fixed within all domesticates and were selected during the initial episode of domestication, whereas improvement traits are present only in a proportion of domesticates, though they may be