THE ORIGINS OF LYCANTHROPY.

Part One: The Invisible Paw.

Written by Utlah.

The beginning of the domestication of dogs can be traced back to one hundred thousand years ago by using DNA screening. This analysis also proved that the wolf is the origin of all the current breeds of domesticated dog. But how did the wolf benefit humans in the first place? The wolf would have scavenged around human campsites picking up scraps of food. The humans would have tolerated these wolves because a wolf's senses are more keen and have a stronger sense of smell and hearing, and it was these senses that humans lacked most. So while wolves took some of the food they repaid the debt by acting as an early warning system for the camp and making up for this lack in the human senses. This relationship would not have worked unless both had something in common, which was that both humans and wolves were social creatures with a complex social hierarchy and communication skills. Even at the most basic level a human can tell the emotional state of a canine, and it was this common ground that allowed the two species to interact. But Paxton then goes one step further and suggests that its from this need to interact with others which could well have been the initial steps for the beginning of human civilization. So it was not a case of Man who domesticated the Dog, it was the Dog that domesticated Man.
 

Paxton then takes this theory another step forward. By using carbon dating and other anthropological techniques it is known that mankind itself was undergoing a radical evolutionary change during the same period that dogs were being domesticated. We now know that there were actually two separate bipedal ape species around at this time, early Homo Sapiens and Neanderthal man. Yet for some reason Neanderthal man died out leaving Homo Sapiens to become dominant. Some believe that this may have been caused by a mass genocide on the part of the Homo Sapiens, but the period of decline was far too long, between 120,000 and 30,000 years ago. For some reason Homo Sapiens were doing better than Neanderthals, and it is now believed that it may have been the wolf that was the secret to Homo Sapiens success.

From an evolutionary viewpoint, Neanderthals were more advanced. Although Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals had similar brain sizes, Neanderthal man was known to make and trade simple tools with Homo Sapiens. They were also known to bury their dead and place flowers on the graves, something that Homo Sapiens didn't do during the same period. But most notably the Neanderthals also had a protruding face, which indicated that they had a much better sense of smell and a more effective jaw with which to kill and eat. So if Neanderthals were physically superior why did they die out and Homo Sapiens survive? It may have been down to something as simple as the wolf. Homo Sapiens were physically smaller, and with a flat face they had a smaller nasal cavity which meant a less effective sense of smell. But with a smaller head and less developed senses within it they did not require thick neck muscles for support. This allowed them to have better developed vocal cords and facial expressions, and so was capable of a more intricate and advanced society and also gave them the ability to communicate with the wolf. The degraded sense of smell and hearing was no longer important since the wolf would have replaced this sense with it's own.

However, this was only half of the story. If this was all there was to the human/canine relationship then it wouldn't have lasted. Something else was required to cement the two together, and so the dogs played on the human parental instinct. The parental instincts are something programmed into the human mind to take care of it's young, so that humans find babies with big heads and large eyes attractive and feel an urge to look after them. Canine pups also share this same physical similarity with human babies, and so humans would take the most friendly and cute wolf cubs into the camp and take care of them. It was this hand rearing of the pups from birth that helped to domesticate the dog, something that has now been proved in Siberia over a period of forty years.

By taking Silver Foxes into captivity and selectively breeding them, Russian scientists have discovered the process of domestication. The selection of which of these foxes were allowed to breed was incredibly simple; except for a few control subjects only the foxes that did not try to bite humans were allowed to have offspring. By only the fourth generation the offspring were tame, and by the tenth generation they were completely domesticated to such a point that they acted just like normal household dogs. It was found that these domesticated foxes were mentally in a constant childlike state, and it's for this same reason that we are able to control dogs. For if dogs were allowed to mentally mature they would be more independent and less tolerant towards their human owners. They would still act like the wolf.

It may appear as if humans have controlled the dog's evolution, but look at it from the dog's point of view. It was the dogs themselves that decided to join the humans, and for them it's been very successful. Although dogs are more dependant on humans than their wild brethren the wolf, we have more dogs than children, while the numbers of wolves in the wild has been dramatically reduced. So it would truly seem that Man is a Dog's best friend.