Dogs are man’s best friend. It’s a phrase we are all familiar with. Some have said that dogs are the only animal that has truly been domesticated. Interestingly, this seems to have been the case for a very long time. There is even an 8000-year-old dog buried with its owner and wearing some sort of necklace. Such instances of ancient humans burying dogs exist in many cultures as well, everywhere from Siberia to Turkey. How did this come to pass though? Dogs are not so different from the modern coyote or wolf, both wild animals with no particular affinity for humans. What is it that changed to make dogs evolve in such a different way than their four-legged cousins?
One of the most common theories for how the transition from wild beast to “fetch the paper, boy” is what could be called the ‘slow trust’ theory. The idea is basically that a curious wolf got closer and closer to people at the fire and instead of killing it, some early humans decided to feed it. Over time the wolf became dependent on the human and the human began to teach the wolf. Another is that wolves simply began following humans as they migrated with the seasons, feeding off whatever carcasses the humans left behind from time to time. There is even the orphan theory, the idea that a wolf pup was kicked out of the pack for some reason and was taken in by a hunter. Others eventually copied him and now we have ‘toy dogs’.
Now, researchers are trying to find the genetic source of the modern dog by mapping various canine genomes. Already having done several extensive studies on dog genetics, a team of over fifty researchers led by Dr. Robert Losey at the University of Alberta is directing their microscopes to wolves, specifically those living around 11,000 years ago, the end of the last ice age.
How does this genetic mapping work? It involves looking at the spacing between different genes in the wolves DNA. Should these genes be common among wolves in a given area (not just a unique mutation) and then is found to be shared by dogs in say, Turkey, there is clear evidence of a genetic link. What Dr. Losey and his team are doing that is new is also mapping the genes of the humans buried near them. So if there are genetic traits shared by people in Siberia who are buried with or near wolves or wolf-like dogs and farmers down in Turkey who are buried near their dogs it would indicate it wasn’t just wolves who adapted to humans and became dogs along the way. It would suggest that humans also developed, alongside their canine companions, or at least that it was a certain type of human that was more likely to form a bond with wolves and dogs.
Part of the drive for this new avenue of research is that no one seems to be able to come up with a convincing answer to how wolves became domesticated dogs. Every now and then a theory gains traction but only for a year or two before new data comes out and sends them back to the drawing board. What he is trying to do is get back to the source, the origin of that transition. This is the obvious thing to do, to try to get data from the source whenever possible. That way, you get the best, most honest data on any subject, whether it’s mapping canine genetics or crime scene investigation. Even your grandmother probably told you to get your information “straight from the horse’s mouth”.
We know instinctively that we should always learn from the source, to start from the beginning. That’s exactly what TARTLE is doing with data, getting companies to go to you, the source of the data rather than a bunch of opportunistic third parties. That way, they can learn, adjust, and refine their own models based not on guess work, assumptions, and agendas but on data gained from real people eager to make a difference.
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Part of the drive for this new avenue of research is that no one seems to be able to come up with a convincing answer to how wolves became domesticated dogs. Every now and then a theory gains traction but only for a year or two before new data comes out and sends them back to the drawing board. What he is trying to do is get back to the source, the origin of that transition.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome to TARTLEcast with your hosts, Alexander McCaig and Jason Rigby, where humanity steps into the future and source data defines the path.
Alexander McCaig (00:24):
Welcome back, everybody, to TARTLEcast. All of our supporters, being those data champions and...
Jason Rigby (00:30):
Champions! (singing).
Alexander McCaig (00:32):
Solving the world's problems.
Jason Rigby (00:34):
What's the Champion song from the late seventies? Was it Queen?
Alexander McCaig (00:37):
Yeah, We are the Champions.
Jason Rigby (00:39):
Yeah, We are the Champions.
Alexander McCaig (00:39):
Yeah. It's Queen. Queen's a great band.
Jason Rigby (00:42):
Yeah, that's a great song. That's what everyone's data champions and just play that song. (Singing).
Alexander McCaig (00:46):
Too bad we don't own the rights to that.
Jason Rigby (00:50):
Yeah exactly. No, we just got to take it down from here.
Alexander McCaig (00:52):
Yeah, fantastic. So I'm sleeping last night... This will lead into what we're talking about here. And even though it's like...
Jason Rigby (01:00):
Why? Because everybody's sleeping on our show because it's so boring.
Alexander McCaig (01:04):
It's going to suck to listen to. Why do I even tune in? The guys driving the cars are like, "I don't even know why I listen to this."
Jason Rigby (01:09):
Yeah. Why do I listen to this...
Alexander McCaig (01:10):
Fucking data show. I'd turn it on anyway.
Jason Rigby (01:13):
Yeah it helps me.
Alexander McCaig (01:14):
So I got the window cracked open and it's 20 degrees outside, winds absolutely whipping up here and 6,000 feet up, and I started hearing all these coyotes howling. And it's funny because the wind is carrying their voices from where they are over in the reservation land. It's 2:30 and I know they just killed something, but the pack...
Jason Rigby (01:39):
It was just all excited.
Alexander McCaig (01:40):
It was just so excited and then they all get out and droll and they're all yipping and screaming.
Jason Rigby (01:44):
They didn't care.
Alexander McCaig (01:45):
No, they didn't care about...
Jason Rigby (01:47):
[crosstalk 00:01:47] They're like "Yeah we got a baby deer or a rabbit."
Alexander McCaig (01:50):
Yeah. And then and I think to my dogs and they're sitting around just begging for food.
Jason Rigby (01:58):
How about you lazy bumps go get it?
Alexander McCaig (02:00):
Yeah, you take it out of the food container and fill it up yourself.
Jason Rigby (02:03):
Go grab that. You've got neighbors, go raid their apartments. Grab their food, rip a leg off.
Alexander McCaig (02:10):
Do whatever you can and go get your own food. The coyotes have figured it out. And it's just over time... There's just such a contrast between the wild dog... Coyotes are very pretty. Most of them are to look at if they haven't been beat up by some other animal. And then you look at your dog and how it operates... two very specific genetic roots have been taken and one has gone to acclimate itself to how human behavior works and working with the human, the other one's "Screw him as we're going to keep doing our own thing." And so what we want to talk about here is how there has been a study...
Jason Rigby (02:53):
Data...
Alexander McCaig (02:53):
...A data study, especially with gene mapping on Siberian Wolves.
Jason Rigby (03:00):
Ice Age Wolves? In the bid to trace the origin of dogs...
Alexander McCaig (03:05):
Of dogs. Because we, in our recorded past... You see it in many old cultures, even hieroglyphics, they'll show man's interaction with dogs and in Turkey, farmers used to have dogs that would come with them. But a lot of these areas sat across major trade routes. So when there was high amounts of civilization in a specific place when traders would come in and things would collide, naturally, a dog would be brought with them. So dogs are coming from Siberia, Western Europe, Northern Africa, and they're all intermingling. And farmers over time... crop selection. You always want to plant seeds for the crop that was more robust. Because you want to keep your yields up.
Alexander McCaig (03:50):
Well, they want to do the same thing with those working breeds. I want to continue to choose this dog. It seems to be bonded pretty well to me, it's easy with humans. Let's re-breed it with another thing. And it also does well in the farm field. And so you see how this process starts to work. But the real question is if we go back in time, what is the progenitor to these domesticated dogs? What is the progenitor of the dog that is so bonded with a human being and can be so domesticated? Does it really come from a wolf? So let's dive into this article here.
Jason Rigby (04:20):
Yeah. I think it's really interesting. There was a dog that was laid to rest that they found 8,000 years ago, it's fossilized bones, but the dog was adorned with a necklace of an elk tooth.
Alexander McCaig (04:33):
Yeah. And if anyone wants to know what adorn means, it is like you're graciously placing something, an elk tooth. Which is interesting. So do you think it was used for hunting?
Jason Rigby (04:43):
Yeah, I could just imagine it was probably... We use dogs for hunting now all over the world. So I could imagine it was probably the same scenario to find him. He probably thought being utilitarian, one man's best friend. There probably was a connection there amongst this.
Alexander McCaig (05:00):
The Siberian Inuits or whoever they may be. And these wolves. And I've come in contact with a crossbreed before as someone had. I got to tell you, this thing was huge. And it was 70% wolf, 30% dog. I remember this guy telling me, I have to put on a chainmail glove, the ones that divers wear for shark suits? I had to put that on when I was originally feeding this animal and I had to give it huge chunks of raw meat. That is something which could just bite at his hand. So I'm wondering how the interaction works between Siberians in the Wolf packs that are going around.
Jason Rigby (05:37):
Yeah, I must picture, you've seen those Alaskan dogs and the way that they live, they just basically live outside all the time. They love it, they love the snow. but There's a separation, a distinction there from being a working dog to... You see that with police animals too, or service dogs where there's this separation of not becoming... That it has a job to do because dogs love to work.
Alexander McCaig (06:05):
They do. They love to work. My dogs become immensely bored unless I give them a task. And it could be the stupidest task in the world, but they are so pleased.
Jason Rigby (06:13):
Yeah. And I want people... This is a little tip. I learned this. You can go on Amazon and buy puzzles for dogs and you put little treats in them and they have different levels, level two, level one. And they said that a puzzle... I was reading this article about these puzzles... A puzzle mentally wears them out as if they did a 45 minute run. It wears them physically out because they're working so hard mentally. So after they figure out the puzzle, they'll go lay down and fall asleep because they're just so mentally tired.
Alexander McCaig (06:44):
I need to get them some more of those puzzles.
Jason Rigby (06:46):
It's cool. It's fun to watch them too. Because they're...
Alexander McCaig (06:48):
They're trying to figure it out.
Jason Rigby (06:48):
How do I open the second smell of the tree?
Alexander McCaig (06:51):
Now that I'm thinking about this, the puzzle and the curiosity and the work that's happening in the brain, creating some sort of connection within the nervous system. When we talked about Jane Goodall and the chimpanzees, there was a moment when she first made contact with them where these things were essentially evading her. So when I think of this in contrast or comparison to the Siberians and the Wolf, maybe there was that sort of point when they were avoiding each other, but then they slowly crept up. And once the Wolf realized that this is not a threat, that's when the first point of that bond started to take.
Jason Rigby (07:27):
Yeah, because you have to think they helped each other. One, there would be protection. If you're laying at the fire at night and the dog hears something, the dog would go seek out whatever he was wanting to kill, a rabbit or whatever.
Alexander McCaig (07:40):
Or what if you're a Siberian elk hunter, and you can only bring back half of the carcass? The wolves are naturally going to follow you. Not for you, they just know that you're going to be leaving something behind. Right. So maybe the bond started with something where no one had any intention of interacting with them? And they just think, Oh, this tall thing, animal, is leaving me a gift.
Jason Rigby (08:01):
Yeah. Or you have the proverbial puppy being left out? And then the person...
Alexander McCaig (08:05):
And you coddle it like Game of Thrones. Oh, I got my werewolf thing, whatever they were called.
Jason Rigby (08:09):
Yeah, those were big...
Alexander McCaig (08:12):
Dire Wolf.
Jason Rigby (08:13):
Yeah, dire wolf, yeah. But this was in Southern Siberia and they found that at this lake, I'm going to butcher this, by [Caudal 00:08:20], the bodies of dogs were given proper burials by the humans who loved them. That's what the article says. So there was multiple dogs' burials, and obviously they took the time to bury them properly like a human.
Alexander McCaig (08:32):
I love that they say that the humans loved them. How do you know if the Siberians loved the dog? If I go to Viking culture they don't love the sword, they just respected it. And they would implant ruins on it and all those sort of things make you think that you take the sword and.
Jason Rigby (08:47):
[crosstalk 00:08:47] Yeah, I think respect may have been a better word.
Alexander McCaig (08:50):
Yeah, rather than love.
Jason Rigby (08:51):
So they want to track the sort of ties between man and beast and dig deeper into the genetic source of the modern domestic dog. And Robert Lowe's University of Alberta anthropologists said that everybody wants to know the answer to this question. So, you know what I mean?
Alexander McCaig (09:04):
I got to say-
Jason Rigby (09:05):
We love dogs now.
Alexander McCaig (09:06):
We love dogs. I have not been asking this question. I know he said, "everybody."
Jason Rigby (09:11):
Okay Dr. [Losie 00:09:13].
Alexander McCaig (09:14):
He's trying to make a big deal out of it.
Jason Rigby (09:16):
Yeah. This article seems a lot of hyperbole.
Alexander McCaig (09:17):
Yeah, well you got to get hyped up. I mean that dubbed genetics.
Jason Rigby (09:21):
Having already completed one of the most comprehensive genetic studies of prehistoric dogs to date Lowe's international team of more than 50 researchers have turned their attention to the Denae wolves for the end of the last ice age about 11,500 years ago, which the timeline seems that would make sense.
Alexander McCaig (09:36):
Yeah, that sounds about right. And what's cool about this is that with the DNA mapping, what they do is they look at the spacing and the position between genes. And so if that is shared between a couple of wolves, and then you also find that same sort of, almost geographical layout, with another domesticated dog that you might find down in Turkey, then something has to be connected or shared. And so what they did is they expand beyond just this large data set of doing the DNA mapping and say, "Okay, let's start mapping the DNA of the individuals that were actually buried around the Wolf." So what happens is you have the Wolf in the center-
Jason Rigby (10:15):
It's the gray Wolf.
Alexander McCaig (10:17):
The crown jewel, the 100 pound gray Wolf, which is insane. And then about a 100 yards or 200 yards outside of that is a ring of burial people. And so you look at that DNA and has there been a match between the DNA of the dog and the DNA of these people in these other more developed areas? Because then you can start to say, "Was there a transition or an interaction between these people and this Wolf with the people down in Turkey that are also sharing this DNA and the dog sharing that DNA, is there some sort of comparative analysis that can kind of happen here with that genetic data?"
Jason Rigby (10:49):
Yeah and Lowe's had said, no one has really come up with the long-standing answer that convinces people for more than a year or two until new data comes out. So the data sets are coming out and then it's opening up something new that they've never thought of. And so now they're-
Alexander McCaig (11:02):
That's a cool point that you talked about that when you get new data more truthful, advanced data we have to then go back and refine our view of the world, how we thought things really were. We always kind of have this bent perspective. You view things a certain way. I view it a certain way. But then when the third-party... Just totally independent agnostic, third-party data comes in and says, no, you should really be looking at it like this because this is what it is. It's amazing, how in the sense of dog mapping and how we feel about dogs and their history, it kind of plays off in everything else. As more of this truthful data comes in that you can aggregate and analyze, it's going to refine our view of the world to a more truthful view.
Jason Rigby (11:44):
Yeah, well, Dr. Lowe, see he's onto something because he said let's go back to the source...
Alexander McCaig (11:49):
Oh man, what a good dude.
Jason Rigby (11:52):
Yeah. I came up with the source because he said this, he said, "Mapping Wolf DNA will help them narrow things down on the dog murder mystery." Anytime you can go back to the source, it's going to narrow things down.
Alexander McCaig (12:01):
It narrows it right down because where things started. They look for it in crimes, right. NASA wants to know, well, where's the part where we're going to stop so we can land back at it. It's always looking back, where's the birth of the universe, where's the source, what's that driver? That's what we're always searching for whatever that might be. But it's beneficial because it helps us find the real raw truth without all these other interactions that are a part of this lifespan of this dog that could affect what we think is really going on. Like love, we're not really sure if they loved it. But we have to go back to the source and try and figure out, well, what really was that sort of relationship that was going on between the Wolf and the Siberians.
Jason Rigby (12:42):
Yeah. And that's what they think this ice age Wolf during that time, 11,500 years, that that is the time that they feel if they can unearth more of these wolves during that timeframe, they said, it's extremely rare to find intact DNA, but when they do find it, if they can map it out and then map out the gray Wolf, they feel they can start looking at correlations. And I mean, I think it would be a daunting task, but a task that seems doable with data.
Alexander McCaig (13:13):
It's also another interesting metaphor is that it requires human effort to generate that data. The person has to literally go to Siberia and start carving through the ice and then you can figure out truthfully what's going on. Well, the same thing works for any old Joe Schmoe too. That person is doing their life going about whatever processes and they're creating data while they're doing it. It's funny what really drives it? And I think that's a really, really cool driver. And there's a lot of analogies that can be used here with this article and actually mapping this Wolf DNA. And what it really means for data and the process of how we use it and how we learn from it. Yeah.
Jason Rigby (13:53):
Yeah and I think... And we can close on this. This Dr. Lowe, she said, understanding the history of dogs sheds light on our own ancestors. Even thousands of years ago, dogs has already earned an important place in human society. Sometimes getting data from a certain thing that correlates with something else can actually give you insights. So that's what they're looking at. Not only is it going to just... We're just going to understand where Pluto came from, but we're also going to be able to understand about us migratory patterns, all these different settlements...
Alexander McCaig (14:25):
It's one more thing to backup how we think ancient human migration really was like.
Jason Rigby (14:30):
Yeah, and data interconnects like that. And I want to kind of get into a little bit when we talked about going back to the source and we talk about mapping...
Alexander McCaig (14:38):
Oh, hold on, everybody. I put my phone on "Do Not Disturb", still choosing the ring. That's my favorite. Yeah, so let's go back to this for us.
Jason Rigby (14:44):
Yeah, and you can close on this, going back to the source they're looking at mapping out this DNA. If a business wants to purchase data from TARTLE and they want to go to the source and they want to map out questions that they may have in looking exactly at, maybe it's a big project that they're looking at, but there's holes in that project, and they want to go to the source, how would they do that? And how could they purchase data from TARTLE?
Alexander McCaig (15:07):
Yeah, the easiest way for them to do that... And please, excuse me, one more time. It must be important. Who knows? The way for them to do this, they go to tartle.co and they're going to click on the button that says, "Get Started". And if you already have an idea in your mind of the unknown you're trying to solve, but then it's unknown so it might be a little bit of a misnomer, but there's a lot of data that is already in the marketplace. And that can help be things that maybe corollary to what you're trying to figure out. It may not be something direct. And so if you need to pair that data with something that's direct, you can come in and you can build that data packet so it's specific to what you need as a business or a researcher. And then once you've done that, you say, okay, well, how much of it do I want to buy from people?
Alexander McCaig (15:56):
Okay. I want to buy 10,000 of these. Okay. I want to buy 10,000 right here. I put in the price and I hit plays bid. And then all you got to do is just wait 24 hours to the bid cycle end. And then, there you have it. You have this beautiful, clean dataset where people have already done the work to sift through a lot of the stuff for you. And you can just come in and do the analysis that you want to do on it. In 24 hours you have a clean little file, all done, all the unknowns right there.
Jason Rigby (16:18):
That's amazing. And so I encourage everybody to go to T-R-E-
Alexander McCaig (16:21):
This episode's falling apart.
Jason Rigby (16:22):
T-A-R-T-L-E dot C-O.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Thank you for listening to TARTLEcast with your hosts, Alexandra McCaig and Jason Rigby, when humanity steps into the future and the source data defines the path. What's your data worth.
