Food & agriculture · c. 17,000 years ago

Domestic dog

Wolves that scavenged human camps became the first domesticated animal, well before any crop.

Genetic and archaeological evidence places dog domestication at least 15,000 years ago among Eurasian hunter-gatherers. Dogs aided hunting and guarding, and proved that a wild species could be reshaped by living alongside people.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 2

Control of fire 1M years ago
First stone tools 3.3M years ago

What it led to 1

Livestock domestication 8500 BCE

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

World population over a million years Latest: 6.27k million people (2000) Source: DeLong 1998, table 'Total World Population' (Kremer series); Kremer 1993, Population Growth and Technological Change: One Million B.C. to 1990, QJE 108(3)