How Long Have Dogs Been Brought Under Control Or Domesticated?

From the time there have been any permanent records of man's history, the dog has been mentioned. There are pictures of dogs on Egyptian tombs that are 5000 years old. The Egyptians even considered the dog sacred and when a dog died in an Egyptian home, the whole family went into mourning.

Since the history of the dog goes back many hundreds and thousands of years, it is impossible to trace it clearly. Scientists believe that dogs are the result of the mating of wolves and jackals. Other groups of scientists believe that some dogs are descended from wolves, other dogs from jackals, others from coyotes and some from the foxes. A widely held theory is that our modern dogs and the wolves are descended from a very remote common ancestor. At first the dog followed men on their hunting expeditions and then the instinct for companionship made him adopt man as his leader. Soon the men trained the dogs to help them in the hunt, to carry their burdens and to guard their fire sides. All this happened long before there was any recorded history.

It has been proved that dogs are descended from various sub-species of wolves only, and that this has probably happened several times over different parts of the world, many thousands of years ago.  Every time archaeologists think they have answered this question, they find dog remains that are even older - so we still do not really know.