What would the world be like without music or rivers or the green and tender grass? What would this world be like without dogs?” Mary Oliver writes in Dog Songs. Science has now confirmed what the heart has always suspected: That the dog has been by man’s side long before the dawn of civilisation. The earliest genetic evidence of the existence of dogs, dating roughly to 15,800 years ago — more than 5,000 years earlier than previously believed — has come to light. At some sites, skeletal remains of pets were found buried alongside human remains; elsewhere, evidence suggests that in a world defined by precarity, dogs may have helped humans hunt and guard.

Source: Indian Express March 28, 2026 06:16 UTC