Wolves May Have Given Survival Edge to Early Humans

Early humans became better hunters after they domesticated wolves about 135,000 years ago, an advantage that possibly helped them outlive Neanderthals and other rivals, according to a Caltech researcher.

The wolf’s strength, stamina and acute hearing and sense of smell probably helped humans to hunt prey and overcome predators, especially at night, said John Allman, who specializes in evolutionary biology.

Domesticating wolves “would have been a huge selective advantage for whatever human population did that because it would have allowed modern humans to move into areas that were previously inhospitable,” he said.

By teaming up with domesticated wolves, the ancestors of modern Homo sapiens became better hunters and eventually were able to supplant Homo erectus and Neanderthal populations, Allman theorizes in his recently published book “Evolving Brains.”

Allman used a biological timeline, results from DNA studies and observations of human, wolf and dog behavior to support his conclusion.

“Early domesticated dogs probably looked just like wolves. You would expect that there wouldn’t be too many differences,” Allman said. “Early dogs would have been performing very wolf-like functions.”

In his book, Allman noted that scientific evidence indicates Homo sapiens lived in Africa, Neanderthals lived in Europe and Western Asia, and a Homo erectus population probably lived in Southeast Asia about 150,000 years ago.

The highly successful species of wolf, Canis lupus, also lived around the same time, but not in Africa.

Comparative DNA studies from modern humans indicate that Homo sapiens began migrating out of Africa about 140,000 years ago, probably encountering wolves in Asia, Allman said.

“Wolves were found throughout Eurasia and most of North America, one of the widest distribution of mammalian species, which suggests survivability,” Allman said.

A recent study by UCLA biologist Robert Wayne, who compared the DNA of wolves, dogs and other canines around the world, showed that dogs evolved from wolves and that domestication of wolves began as early as 135,000 years ago.

“It wasn’t such a huge amount to achieve this cooperativity between these two different species” because wolves and humans shared similar social structures, Allman argued.

Allman, who has owned several generations of the same family of sheep dogs, first began noting the similarities as a graduate student studying anthropology 30 years ago.

He noted that wolves have an extended family and a “cooperative rearing strategy” for their pups. A female wolf stays in the den and feeds the pups while other wolves go out to gather food and bring it back.

“That just struck me as perhaps having a bit in common with what early humans must have been like,” Allman said. “Engaging in cooperative rearing is pretty rare in mammals. Typically, in most mammals, the mother takes care of her offspring with little help from anybody else.”

Also, wolf packs have dominant members. After a pack takes down prey, the dominant hunter controls who gets a share of the carcass. Some of the more submissive wolves sometimes must beg for a piece.

Allman suggests that humans learned to make wolves defer to them by taking the role of the dominant wolf. Likewise, domesticated wolves saw humans as pack members who brought food to their pups, he argued.