>>  I'd say the key question is, WHEN did we start hunting
with dogs?  If it's long enough ago, then we can conclude that our bodies
have adapted to that WOE.  Anybody know the answer? >>


A team of geneticists and evoloutionary biologists at UCLA  estimate that
the first transformation from wolf to dog may have happened more than
100,000 years ago, and that there were at least two domestication events,
although from the same progenitor.  This is substantially longer than the
single domestication event 14,000 years ago that archeologists had
estimated.    From the article "The Origins of Dogs: Running with the
Wolves" (Science, June, 1998):

"Wayne and his colleagues suggest that dogs aren't seen in the
archaeological record until 14,000 years ago because they looked like
wolves before that date.  Dogs, they propose, may not have become
morphologically distinct from wolves--becoming smaller and shorter
muzzled--until humans themselves settled down in agricultural communities. 
That might mean that wolf bones from some early hominid sites are actually
those of the protodog."

It should be noted that not all scientists agree with the team's findings,
but the study is the largest research project of its kind into the origins
of the domestic dog.



Lynda Bryson
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