Burying dogs then became more common around 12,000 years ago.
Darcy Morey, author of the paper, told Animal Planet News that this period "was a time of major population expansion, starting with, for our purposes, colonization for the first time of eastern Eurasia and finally on into the New World. This is just me being mushy and fuzzy, but it seems that folks were a little more willing to try things, like drift into previously unoccupied expanses, and maybe engage in human-animal associations that resulted in domestication?"
Morey believes the canine genetic break from wolves may not be linked to domestication.
"Quite simply, if the dog and wolf genomes really did separate as long ago as some molecular studies have suggested, or even in that vicinity, the animals that were destined to become dogs must have made their living for some time essentially in the old-fashioned way, like wolves," he said.
The burials reveal our evolving relationship with dogs. Often dog skeletons lay alongside human ones.
In one 7,000-year-old Swedish grave, archaeologists found the remains of a dog stretched out on the legs of a deceased man, as though the man hoped to hold and pet his canine friend for all eternity.
The dog's neck was broken, indicating that it had been killed when its owner died.
