Bronze Age Pigeon Bones on Cyprus Studied

GRONINGEN, THE NETHERLANDS—According to a statement released by Antiquity, analysis of pigeon bones from the site of Hala Sultan Tekke, a harbor city on the island of Cyprus, suggests that the birds (Columba livia) were semidomesticated as early as 1400 B.C. This is about 1,000 years earlier than was previously thought based on the remains of domesticated pigeons unearthed in Greece. Pigeons are known to have provided companionship, meat, and fertilizer. “We knew that pigeons must have become domesticated somewhere in the Middle East or Eastern Mediterranean, based mostly on the written record from Egypt, but we had no idea when or how," said Anderson Carter of the University of Groningen. Isotope analysis of the pigeon bones unearthed at Hala Sultan Tekke shows that they consumed a diet almost identical to that eaten by people, indicating that either people fed the pigeons or the two species at least lived in close proximity to each other. “Either way, this very likely means that they were domesticated or on their way to being domesticated," concluded Canan Çakırlar of the University of Groningen. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Antiquity. For more on Hala Sultan Tekke, go to "In the Time of the Copper Kings."