Prehistoric Dogs Were More Than Hunting Companions

EDMONTON, CANADA—Robert Losey of the University of Alberta studied prehistoric burials of dogs from around the world. He found that dog burials were more common in regions where the human population was dense, the dead were buried in cemeteries, and people ate a lot of aquatic foods, even though it had been thought the dogs were kept by humans primarily for hunting terrestrial game. In Eastern Siberia, where dog domestication is estimated to have occurred 33,000 ago, dogs were only buried for the past 10,000 years, and then only when a human was also being buried. “I think the hunter-gatherers here saw some of the 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,” Losey said. For example, one dog had been buried wearing a necklace made of four red deer tooth pendants, a human fashion at the time.