Also no reason to believe that older children, too young to hunt, couldn’t have been involved in the domestication.
Just because domestication was more complex than previously believed doesn’t mean domestication didn’t occur. If an adult animal didn’t fit the model it would likely either leave or be culled.
I lean toward acceptance of this theory and would add that the current archeological evidence seems to support a ~14,000 BCE start date for domesticated dogs we don’t, seem, to have many earlier domesticated dog burials earlier than this date
Having said that, I want to offer though that Sam’s right there are Human-Neanderthal-dog theories and more importantly there are barely 10 year old genetic studies that suggested a more ancient origin for dogs - and THAT study is kind of the fundamental one upon most other dog genetic studies are based. There been speculation to answer how this can be - but it really hasn’t been answered… and until we can show Vila & Savolainen were wrong or get a clear read on their work Coppinger is the best theory with a fairly big wart on its nose that we all just kinda have to pretend not to see
I think that the biggest objection to early humans grabbing random wolf pups and raising them isn’t lack of time, its lack of resources. When obtaining food is your highest priority, why hang onto a potential piece of protein that not only has no obvious benefit, but also competes with you for food! The argument that wolves had to prove their usefulness first makes more sense than the “all human love cuddly puppies” theory.
Following up on your point wrt to resources.
Dogs are generally agreed as the first animal to get domesticated. That means people had no cows or sheep with which to provide the wolf cubs with milk.
Now Coppinger emphatically states that you can’t even tame a wolf starting 14 days after birth. Eyes are still closed up till then. Even if you start before that , tamed wolves will still get vicious if you take their bone or disrupt their copulation .
So to even begin to tame a wolf cub you, you need to feed it milk that you don’t have. Sure, that brings to mind an inverted Romulus scenario but that is just as unlikely as the myth.
Yeah, you just try to find a wolf with a cloaking device.
What?
Who doesn’t?
The idea of hunter-gatherers having more leisure time or just as much leisure time as us is a myth. The notion of it is called the “Original Affluent Society” and developed because a researcher miscounted time that was actually work as leisure time because the people sat around and chatted and socialized while they worked.
I don’t believe that people took pups and kept them for long periods of time because how would they keep them? The people of that time were highly mobile and I don’t see how they could’ve convinced aggressive wolves to follow them as they traveled across the landscape. If humans were roaming the same territory as a a pack of wolves, the wolves could’ve learned to follow the humans around and eat the refuge the humans left. Overtime, the wolves that were more and more friendly were selected for.
A similar thing has been positied to happen with cats. Once farming happened, mice began to accumulate around humans. Cats that were more friendly with humans got better access to mice and over time, friendliness was more and more selected for.
People also continued to eat dogs for long periods after they had probably been domesticated.
grins