Archaeologists have found 6,000-year-old bones from a pet dog nearby the human remnants of its keeper at a burial site in Saudi Arabia. The remnants may be the earliest instance of dog domestication in the area, dating to about 1,000 years earlier than previous findings.
Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU)
The team of international researchers dug up the bones of the dog in 2018 after discovering the burial site in satellite imagery, as part of a large-scale archaeological survey by the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU), which is a Saudi archaeology program with the dedication to preserve and develop historical sites in the Arabain Peninsula.
The primeval tomb where the remnants were discovered is one of the oldest in the area, dating back to around 4300 B.C. The tomb had been used by several generations over a period of about 600 years during the era of Neolithic-Chalcolithic. It was also constructed above ground, which was uncommon for the time, the reason is that it would be seen easily by grave robbers, according to the researchers.
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26 Bone Fragments Discovered
They discovered 26 bone fragments from just one dog that were buried with the remnants of at least 11 humans, plus four children, one adolescent, and six adults. The bones of the dog were too small to be owned by a desert wolf - a much larger, wild canine species that was common at the time. The bones also revealed signs of arthritis, which give a suggestion that the dog was middle- to late-age and was possibly domesticated because many wild dogs would not have lived for this long.
Hugh Thomas, the Lead author, and also an archaeologist at the University of Western Australia in Perth, told Live Science: "Humans love dogs, and the fact that we have proof of one being buried alongside humans give a suggestion that not only were these animals important, but there may have been a bond that was emotional between animal and owner, in spite of the fact that we have made much progression technologically, the role and benefits of dogs for mankind have not changed."
Physical Evidence of Dog Domestication
Live Science previously reported the oldest known physical proof of dog domestication in the world was found in a grave in Oberkassel - a suburb of Bonn in western Germany; those dog remnants were dated to about 14,000 years ago.
The main proof of this comes from rock art found in other parts of the Arabain Peninsula that portrays hunting animals by humans like ibex with the assistance of dogs. The bones of dogs date back to the fifth millennium B.C., but some of the rock art dates back as far as the seventh or eighth millennium B.C.
These dates make a suggestion that dogs had possibly been domesticated already for several thousand years in the area.
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