Palaeolithic dogs and the early domestication of the wolf: a reply to the comments of Crockford and Kuzmin (2012)

This is a response to the comments of Crockford and Kuzmin (2012) on our identification of Palaeolithic dogs from different European Palaeolithic sites. In their comments Crockford and Kuzmin (2012) present some errors, misunderstandings and misrepresentations that we remedy here. In our opinion, the early wolf domestication must be regarded as an intimate relationship between humans and canids including the breeding of the latter by prehistoric people, resulting in the European Palaeolithic dogs. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.