View from the Stora Förvar cave on Stora Karlsö. The cave was explored between 1888 and 1893. The limestone-rich bedrock has contributed to the skeletal material found there being very well preserved.
Photo: Jan Storå
A point I have made several times in these blog posts, and one that creationists typically prefer not to address, is that the Bible presents living things as part of a world made for human use and dominion. Yet the history of animal and plant domestication tells a very different story. The domesticated forms often bear little resemblance to their wild ancestors, not because they were created perfectly fitted for human needs, but because humans altered them by selective breeding over many generations.
For an honest creationist, the question should be obvious: why did an allegedly omniscient creator god fail to anticipate human needs and create animals and plants already ideally suited to them? Why did humans need to do the improving? But, as so often, creationists appear to prefer belief in an incompetent designer to the simpler conclusion that their creation myth is wrong.
No domestic animal illustrates this better than the dog. Domestic dogs are descended from wolves, yet the vast range of dog forms, behaviours and abilities shows what prolonged selection, human preference and cultural need can do. Herding dogs, guard dogs, hunting dogs, sled dogs, lapdogs and companion animals are not the result of a single act of perfect creation; they are the result of human-managed evolution.
Now, new research by scientists from the Francis Crick Institute, Stockholm University, the University of Aberdeen and the University of East Anglia, published online in November 2025 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA (PNAS), shows that human relationships with wolves were more varied and complex than a simple tale of fear, hunting or eventual dog domestication. The researchers report wolf remains from the isolated Baltic island of Stora Karlsö, in a context strongly suggesting that prehistoric people were managing, feeding or otherwise controlling wolves thousands of years ago.
The stories are also framed to illustrate the hardships of Ice Age life for our ancestors, and the same social forces that still shape human societies: conservatism versus progress, suspicion of novelty, and the struggle to be different in a culture that demands conformity. In both stories, teenage girls must negotiate those pressures and, in doing so, help change the future.
The Stockholm University research suggests that such a scenario may be less fanciful than it might first appear. The discovery of 3,000–5,000-year-old grey wolf remains in the Stora Förvar cave on Stora Karlsö points to a close association between prehistoric people and wolves. The island is only about 2.5 square kilometres in area and has no native land mammals, so the presence of wolves there is highly unusual. The researchers argue that the most parsimonious explanation is that the animals were brought there by people, although they rightly stop short of claiming that every alternative can be excluded.
Genomic analysis of two canid remains confirmed that they were grey wolves, not domestic dogs, and found no evidence of domestic dog ancestry. Yet other evidence suggests that these wolves were not simply living as ordinary wild predators. Stable isotope analysis showed that their diet was rich in marine protein, such as seal and fish, matching the diet of the humans who used the island as a seal-hunting, fishing and fowling station. That is strongly suggestive of provisioning — in other words, of wolves being fed by people or living close enough to human activity to share in human food resources.
The remains also show other signs of an unusual relationship. The wolves were small, at the lower end of wolf body-size variation, and the individual with the most complete genome had strikingly low genetic diversity — lower than that seen in previously studied ancient wolves and closer to what is seen in dogs. That does not prove domestication, but it is consistent with isolation, bottlenecking or some form of human control. One Bronze Age specimen also had a serious limb pathology that would probably have reduced its mobility, raising the possibility that it survived because it did not need to hunt large prey for itself.
Of course, it is not possible to say whether these wolves were tamed, kept in captivity, loosely managed, ritually significant, useful in hunting, or involved in some other relationship with the human population. But the important point is that they appear to have occupied an anthropogenic context: a human-shaped environment in which wolves and people were living in close association.
That makes the finding especially interesting in the broader story of domestication. Dogs had already emerged from wolf ancestry long before these Stora Karlsö animals lived, but these were not dogs. They appear instead to represent another kind of human-wolf relationship — one that did not necessarily lead to the domestic dog lineage, but which shows that prehistoric people could form complex, practical relationships with wolves.
From Grey Wolf to Domestic Dog. The domestic dog, Canis lupus familiaris, is descended from the grey wolf, Canis lupus, although not from any living wolf population that has yet been identified as the direct ancestor. The wolves from which dogs evolved were probably part of one or more now-extinct, or as yet unsampled, Late Pleistocene wolf populations.The paper in PNAS was accompanied by a news article from Stockholm University:
Dog domestication was not a single event in which a wild wolf suddenly became a dog. It was a long evolutionary process involving repeated contact between wolves and hunter-gatherer societies during the Ice Age. Wolves that were less fearful of humans may have scavenged around camps, followed hunting parties, or benefited from food waste. Humans, in turn, may have tolerated, fed, protected or selected the more useful and less dangerous individuals.
Over many generations, natural and artificial selection would have favoured traits that made some wolves better suited to life around people. These included reduced fear and aggression, greater tolerance of human proximity, altered social behaviour, and eventually changes in skull shape, tooth size, body size, coat colour, reproduction and digestion. Behaviour almost certainly changed before dogs began to look very different from wolves.
The earliest securely identified domestic dogs pre-date agriculture, which means dogs were the companions of hunter-gatherers long before sheep, goats, cattle, pigs or crops were domesticated. Ancient DNA evidence now places clearly domestic dogs in western Eurasia by about 15,800 years ago, with dogs widely distributed by around 14,000 years ago. Genetic divergence between wolves and dogs may have begun earlier, but divergence dates do not necessarily mark the beginning of domestication.
Ancient DNA has also complicated the older search for a single “birthplace” of the dog. Some evidence links early and modern dogs more closely with ancient wolves from eastern Eurasia, while dogs from regions such as the Near East and Africa also show ancestry related to southwest Eurasian wolves. This could reflect more than one domestication process, or later interbreeding between early dogs and local wolves.
Domestication was followed by further selection for human purposes. Early dogs may have helped with hunting, guarding, transport, warmth, waste disposal, warning of danger and companionship. Much later, especially in the last few centuries, humans intensified selective breeding and produced the extraordinary variety of modern breeds: animals as different in form and function as mastiffs, terriers, retrievers, sheepdogs, dachshunds, sled dogs and toy breeds.
The dog is therefore a striking example of evolution under human direction. A dangerous wild predator was not created ready-made for human use; it was gradually transformed by association, tolerance, selection and breeding into one of humanity’s most useful companion animals. That is precisely what evolution predicts, and precisely what creationism fails to explain: if animals were supposedly created for us, why did we have to redesign them ourselves?
Ancient wolves on remote Baltic Sea island reveal link to prehistoric humans
Scientists have found wolf remains, thousands of years old, on a small, isolated island in the Baltic Sea – a place where the animals could only have been brought by humans. The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by researchers at the Francis Crick Institute, Stockholm University, the University of Aberdeen and the University of East Anglia, suggests that grey wolves may have been managed or controlled by prehistoric societies.
The discovery of the 3,000–5,000-year-old wolf remains was made in the Stora Förvar cave on the Swedish island of Stora Karlsö, a site known for its intensive use by seal hunters and fishers during the Neolithic and Bronze Ages. The island, which covers only 2.5 square kilometres, has no native land mammals, meaning that any such animals must have been brought there by people.
Genomic analysis of two canid remains confirmed they were wolves, not dogs, with no evidence of dog ancestry. However, they exhibited several traits typically associated with life alongside humans. Isotope analysis of their bones revealed a diet rich in marine protein, such as seals and fish, aligning with the diet of the humans on the island and suggesting they were provisioned. Furthermore, the wolves were smaller than typical mainland wolves, and one individual showed signs of low genetic diversity, a common result of isolation or controlled breeding.
Detail of one of the upper arm bones from one of the wolves included in the study.
Photo: Jan Storå
Wolves living alongside humans
The discovery of these wolves on a remote island is completely unexpected. 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 only have reached by boat. This paints a complex picture of the relationship between humans and wolves in the past.
Dr. Linus Girdland-Flink, co-lead author.
Department of Archaeology
University of Aberdeen
Aberdeen, United Kingdom.
The finding challenges the conventional understanding of wolf-human dynamics and the process of dog domestication. While it remains unclear if these wolves were tamed, kept in captivity, or managed in some other way, their presence in a human-occupied, isolated environment points to a deliberate and sustained interaction.
It was a complete surprise to see that it was a wolf and not a dog. This is a provocative case that raises the possibility that in certain environments, humans were able to keep wolves in their settlements, and found value in doing so.
Pontus Skoglund, senior author
Ancient Genomics Laboratory
The Francis Crick Institute
London, United Kingdom.
The genetic data is fascinating. 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.
Anders Bergström, co-lead author.
School of Biological Sciences
University of East Anglia
Norwich, United Kingdom.
May have been cared for
One of the wolf specimens, dated to the Bronze Age, also showed advanced pathology in a limb bone, which would have limited its mobility. This suggests it may have been cared for or was able to survive in an environment where it did not need to hunt large prey.
The combination of osteology and genetic analyses have provided unique information not available separately.
The combination of data has revealed new and very unexpected perspectives on Stone Age and Bronze Age human-animal interactions in general and specifically concerning wolves and also dogs.
Professor Jan Storå, co-author
Department of Archaeology and Classical Studies
Stockholm University
Stockholm, Sweden.
The study suggests that human-wolf interactions in prehistory were more diverse than previously thought, extending beyond simple hunting or avoidance to include complex relations and interactions that, in this case, mirrors new aspects of domestication without leading to the canines we know as dogs today.
Publication:
And so, once again, the evidence points not to a world thoughtfully prepared for human benefit by a perfect designer, but to a natural world that humans had to understand, exploit, modify and improve. Wolves were not created as ready-made sheepdogs, sled dogs, retrievers, guards or companions. Those roles were produced by a long process of association, selection and breeding — in other words, by evolution under human influence.
The Stora Karlsö wolves are a fascinating glimpse into that process, not because they were necessarily domestic dogs, but because they show how varied and experimental the relationship between humans and wolves could be. Long before modern breeds existed, and long after the first true dogs had appeared, prehistoric people were still forming close, practical and probably mutually beneficial relationships with wolves. Some of those relationships may have led nowhere; others, in different times and places, helped create the domestic dog.
For creationists, this creates the familiar problem. If animals were created for human use, why did humans have to spend thousands of years turning wild species into useful domestic forms? Why were wolves created as dangerous predators and not as the loyal, trainable, cooperative animals that selective breeding later produced? Why were cattle, sheep, pigs, horses, crops and dogs all left needing improvement by the very humans they were allegedly created to serve?
The rational answer is that they were not created for us at all. They were wild organisms, products of evolutionary history, which human beings later brought into their own cultural and economic worlds. Domestication is evolution made visible: inherited variation, selection and change over time, shaped in this case by human need and human choice.
As usual, creationism explains none of this. It merely asserts a conclusion and then tries to make the evidence fit. Science, by contrast, follows the evidence wherever it leads — from ancient DNA, isotopes and archaeology to the living diversity of domestic dogs. And that evidence leads not to Genesis, but to evolution, history and human ingenuity.
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