The earliest traces of a dog, or early canid, that walked in companionship alongside a human, are about 26,000 years old: pawprints in France’s Chauvet cave. Going thousands of years further back, dogs were, if you will, the first “proof of concept” – for Paleolithic humans – that domestication is possible. This unique cross-species friendship has been recorded for as long as cave art, and then the written word, have existed. So what is left to be told? Ask cultural historian Thomas W Laqueur .
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