That's the popular understanding, but genetic studies caused science to move away from that explanation some time ago. Dogs seem to have evolved from a common

That's the popular understanding, but genetic studies caused science to move away from that explanation some time ago. Dogs seem to have evolved from a common ancestor with wolves quite a ways back and show a good deal of genetic divergence. Though they are still included in the "Canus" genus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog#Origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog#Origin More detail: > Genetic studies show that dogs and modern wolves display reciprocal monophyly (separate groups), which implies that dogs are not genetically close to any living wolf population and that the wild ancestor of the dog is extinct.[4][2] An extinct Late Pleistocene wolf may have been the ancestor of the dog,[3][1] with the dog's similarity to the extant grey wolf being the result of genetic admixture between the two.[1] In 2020, a literature review of canid domestication stated that modern dogs were not descended from the same Canis lineage as modern wolves, and proposes that dogs may be descended from a Pleistocene wolf closer in size to a village dog.[5] > The genetic divergence between dogs and wolves occurred between 20,000 and 40,000 years ago, just before or during the Last Glacial Maximum[6][1] (20,000–27,000 years ago). This timespan represents the upper time-limit for the commencement of domestication because it is the time of divergence but not the time of domestication, which occurred later.[6][7] One of the most important transitions in human history was the domestication of animals, which began with the long-term association between wolves and hunter–gatherers more than 15,000 years ago.[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_domestic_dog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_domestic_dog