Dr. Selina Brace

It's just, it's quite, it's just amazing.

They are actually already that different.

So, you know, to put it into another context, what it means is these Paleolithic dogs are already more similar to modern dogs, you know, Fido at home than they are to these ancient wolves from the same time.

That kind of like blew my mind, to be honest.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I hope it was behaving differently, William.

Otherwise, they might have had a bit of a problem.

Yeah, that's correct.

I think that's the assumption that we would make from this.

I mean, you do not see signs of modification of the wolf.

So the wolf has not been butchered.

We see no signs of any kind of modification in that way.

And also, as we say, the people at Gough's Cave were likely occupying the cave seasonally.

They weren't there all the time.

So it's more likely, perhaps, that this wolf was coming in even at a completely different time point to the humans.

We can't say for sure, obviously.

Our radiocarbon dating isn't that good, to put it down to very precise dates.

But one could imagine that this cave was being used by wild animals.

Animals were scavenging in there, as well as humans using it as a butchery site.