New research shows the beauty of the bond between dog and man.

I was doing some research for another writing project and came across this on the NBC News website:

What prehistoric dog burials tell us about owners

By Jennifer Viegas

An analysis of ancient dog burials finds that the typical prehistoric dog owner ate a lot of seafood, had spiritual beliefs, and wore jewelry that sometimes wound up on the dog.

The study, published in PLoS ONE, is one of the first to directly test if there was a clear relationship between the practice of dog burial and human behaviors. The answer is yes.

That PLOS ONE study, published March 2013, found that “dog domestication predates the beginning of agriculture about 10,000 years ago.”

Dr. Robert Losey, Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta and the lead author, explained that,

Dog burials appear to be more common in areas where diets were rich in aquatic foods because these same areas also appear to have had the densest human populations and the most cemeteries,

If the practice of burying dogs was solely related to their importance in procuring terrestrial game, we would expect to see them in the Early Holocene (around 9,000 years ago), when human subsistence practices were focused on these animals.

Robert Losey continued.

Further, we would expect to see them in later periods in areas where fish were never really major components of the diet and deer were the primary focus, but they are rare or absent in these regions.

The PLOS ONE paper went on to report that researchers found that most of the dog burials occurred during the Early Neolithic period, some 7,000-8,000 years ago, and that “dogs were only buried when human hunter-gatherers were also being buried.”  Dr. Losey went on to say,

I think the hunter-gatherers here saw some of their dogs as being nearly the same as themselves, even at a spiritual level. At this time, dogs were the only animals living closely with humans, and they were likely known at an individual level, far more so than any other animal people encountered. People came to know them as unique, special individuals.

Those interested in the research paper may find it here, and read the Abstract:

Ancient DNA Analysis Affirms the Canid from Altai as a Primitive Dog

Abstract

The origin of domestic dogs remains controversial, with genetic data indicating a separation between modern dogs and wolves in the Late Pleistocene. However, only a few dog-like fossils are found prior to the Last Glacial Maximum, and it is widely accepted that the dog domestication predates the beginning of agriculture about 10,000 years ago. In order to evaluate the genetic relationship of one of the oldest dogs, we have isolated ancient DNA from the recently described putative 33,000-year old Pleistocene dog from Altai and analysed 413 nucleotides of the mitochondrial control region. Our analyses reveal that the unique haplotype of the Altai dog is more closely related to modern dogs and prehistoric New World canids than it is to contemporary wolves. Further genetic analyses of ancient canids may reveal a more exact date and centre of domestication.

DNA testing indicates that the evolutionary split between dogs and wolves was around 100,000 years ago or more. The value of dogs to early human hunter-gatherers led to them quickly becoming ubiquitous across world cultures.

Thus it is in the order of 90,000 years, possibly a couple of decades longer, from the point where a bond was made between early man and the wolf to the era when man evolved from a tribal hunter-gatherer existence to farming the resources of the planet. Thousands and thousands of years of dogs being the greatest animal relationship we humans have ever experienced.

Back to that NBC news item:

Erik Axelsson, a researcher at Uppsala University’s Science for Life Laboratory, has also studied prehistoric dogs. He too found that human and dog diets, burial practices and more often paralleled each other, revealing how close the dog-human bond has been for thousands of years.

Axelsson said, “Dogs and humans share the same environment, we eat similar food and we get similar diseases.”

Based on the number of burials, we also often spend eternity together too.

Eons of time.

• Communication
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