["Walt"]Thats very interesting Brandonm. I watched something on TV about this. The historian guessed that Dogs became domesticated by at first hanging out near tribes and eating their garbage. Bones and such that prehistoric man would throw in their dump wich was usually very close to home. As Man and dog became more accustom to each other it was inevitable that dogs became domesticated. Atleast thats what I remember him saying."
His speculation is just as valid as my speculation since neither of us were actually there; BUT I am sure that opossums, rats, mice, vultures, crows, flighless carnivorous birds, big cats, bears, etc also probably combed through prehistoric man's garbage and there is little record that any of these were widly accepted as pets by prehistoric man. The domestication of dogs occurred way way way out there in prehistory. Dingos boated to Australia thousands of years ago. The Indians crossed into North America ~25,000 years ago and dogs came with them so we know Asians had dogs tens of thousands of years ago. Dogs evolutionarily split off from the grey wolf ~100,000 years ago. Now were those first dogs......wild dogs that thousands of years later got domesticated by man? or was the first domesticated animal actually the wolf and the evolution of the dog was NOT an evolutionary accident; but rather was mostly selective breeding of wolves by man??? The dog (wolf?) is probably the first domesticated animal so the person who first domesticated them probably invented the whole concept of keeping and training pets. Our thinking of how this happened is colored by our knowledge of dogs and other pets. I think it is a little out there too suggest that somebody who had never heard of any kind of pet would suddenly try to make "friends" with an adult predator he fought for food with every day. Taking a litter of pups in as perhaps a future meal and then forming that whole pack bond is a whole different scenario.
