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Where did our best friends come from, anyway?

While some believe that dogs originated from wolves in the Middle East, other say that it was in Europe that it happened. However, now researchers claim that dogs originated in South East Asia only, according to scienceworldreport.

In the past, scientists seem to have been misguided because they did not use samples that came from South East Asia.

"Which is why we analyzed the entire nuclear genome of a global sample collection from 46 dogs, which includes samples from southern China and South East Asia," said Peter Savolainen, in a news release. "We then found out that dogs from South East Asia stand out from all other dog populations, because they have the highest genetic diversity and are genetically closest to the wolf."

This bit of information confirms the experiments that Savolainen has undertaken with mitochondrial DNA.

"We also found that the global dog population is based on two important events: the dog and wolf populations first began to split off around 33,000 years ago in South East Asia," said Savolainen. "The global spread of dogs followed about 18,000 years later."

Perhaps wolves got divided and the south Chinese species became dogs. It is also possible that the international spreading of dogs from South East Asia got linked with domestication.

The findings are published in the journal Cell Research.