The ancient remains of two gray wolves were found in a cave on Stora Karlso, a small Swedish island located in the Baltic Sea. The remote island was never connected to the mainland, so the wolves couldn’t have gotten there on their own.
That means they were brought over by humans. Decades later, the discovery has raised new questions about the relationship between wolves and ancient humans.
“The discovery of these wolves on a remote island is completely unexpected,” said Linus Girdland-Flink, the lead author of the study and an archaeologist at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland.
“Not only did they have ancestry indistinguishable from other Eurasian wolves, but they seemed to be living alongside humans, eating their food and in a place they could have only reached by boat.”
The wolves’ remains date back roughly 3,000 to 5,000 years. In the late 19th century, archaeologists were excavating the sediment layers inside Stora Forvar, the cave on the island of Stora Karlso.
During the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, seal hunters and fishermen used this site. The archaeologists uncovered several canid bones and wondered if they came from wolves.
Researchers of today decided to perform genetic testing on the remains, which confirmed that the two canids found on the island were wolves with no evidence of dog ancestry.
Even though the creatures were genetically wolf, they showed clear signs that they had been living closely with people.
For one, the results of an isotope analysis revealed that the wolves consumed large amounts of seals and fish, the same foods people were eating.
In addition, the wolves were smaller than typical wolves living on the mainland. One of the wolves’ genes showed unusually low genetic diversity, indicating that it may have been selectively bred.
“The genetic data is fascinating,” said Anders Bergstrom, a co-lead author of the study from the University of East Anglia.
“We found that the wolf with the most complete genome had low genetic diversity, lower than any other ancient wolf we’ve seen. This is similar to what you see in isolated or bottlenecked populations or in domesticated organisms.”
“While we can’t rule out that these wolves had low genetic diversity for natural reasons, it suggests that humans were interacting with and managing wolves in ways we hadn’t previously considered.”
The same creature found with the low genetic diversity also suffered severe damage to a limb bone. The injury likely would have limited its mobility, yet the animal survived long enough for the condition to heal. This suggests that it was surviving with help from humans.
Overall, the latest research demonstrates that wolves and humans had more complex relationships than previously thought. Some prehistoric communities actually coexisted with wolves and managed them to a certain extent, rather than hunting them or avoiding them.
The study was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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By Emily Chan
Emily Chan is a writer who covers lifestyle and news content. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in... More about Emily Chan
