Tracing Footsteps in Tandem: How Dogs and Humans Moved Across Eastern Eurasia Together

The Long Shadow of Companionship

Some partnerships emerge abruptly. Others take shape across so many generations that their origins blur into deep time. The bond between humans and dogs belongs firmly to the latter category.

For decades, archaeologists and geneticists have tried to parse how early societies used, moved, and interacted with dogs. The broad outline was clear: dogs accompanied Homo sapiens into new regions, adapted to new climates, and filled roles ranging from hunting companion to guardian.

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The finer details, however, were maddeningly elusive. Ancient canine genomes, especially from East Asia, were sparse. Many questions lingered.

A new study published in Science¹ now offers the most complete picture yet of how dogs and humans expanded across eastern Eurasia during the Holocene. Led by Laurent Frantz of LMU Munich and Queen Mary University of London, an international team sequenced 17 ancient dog genomes from Siberia, East Asia, and the Central Asian Steppe, including some of the first ancient dogs ever studied from China.

Their results show something striking: dogs did not merely appear alongside shifting human cultures. They moved with them, often closely mirroring human population turnover.

As one researcher put it, ancient Eurasia looks different when viewed from the perspective of dogs.

“The genetic histories of early dogs and humans run parallel enough to read almost like a shared travelogue,” says Dr. Elena Rossi, an archaeogeneticist at the University of Copenhagen. “These patterns suggest a level of social embeddedness that is difficult to overstate.”