The Dog is a Guest for Dinner - 9400 Years ago

[welsummerchicks]

Researchers were able to confirm that early Americans not only had dogs, but also, that they ate them.

How they found this out is fairly straightforward and just about what you would expect....LOL.

Yes, they were digging around in a gigantic pile of poo.

But even more shockingly, what they found in the poo was stored at Texas A&M University for over 35 years, and just now got examined and tested in detail.

I can just imagine everyone standing around going, 'Why don't you check out what we found at the bottom of the gigantic pile of poo?' and the other guys saying, 'I don't wanna do it, YOU do it', for the last 35 years.

But the news article also said that there was evidence of dogs existing far longer ago than that in Europe - 24,000-30,000 years in various locations in Europe.

I'm not sure that they have proven exactly HOW domesticated they were. They didn't find any fossilized rain booties or dishes marked, 'Precious'.

 

[EweSheep]

I'm not surprised about these news nor eating dogs. In certain countries they eat dogs and they wont eat cows but we would eat cows but not dogs. I hated it when the forums gets slammed around and it is their culture to eat dogs and we have our own culture as well.

In hindsight, dogs will always be around for another thousands of years until we invite them to the dinner table to be eaten.

 

[teach1rusl]

No surprises here. In times of food scarcity, it's quite logical to eat the dog rather than die.

 

[welsummerchicks]

Remember the scientist guy that 'proved' horses were domesticated much earlier than thought previously, because he found cribbing marks on the horse's teeth, proving they were confined?

He was probably fine and getting all sorts of kudos for his creative research until some opinionated horse person tapped him on the shoulder and said, 'Sir! Sir! IF I MAY! Horses crib when not confined! Horses crib when not confined!'

 

[patandchickens]

Quote:
Has anyone ever seen FERAL, never-confined horses cribbing??

Not that I know of.

What stalled horses do in turnout is a different issue than what *wild* horses do, I should think.

Pat

 

[EweSheep]

Quote:
Has anyone ever seen FERAL, never-confined horses cribbing??

Not that I know of.

What stalled horses do in turnout is a different issue than what *wild* horses do, I should think.

Pat

I never have seen any feral horses crib. The only thing remotely CLOSE to it, they would eat the bark off the trees, eat tender shoots off of brushes and trees, in hard winters to keep themselves from starving.

 

[mom'sfolly]

I like the image of the guys at A & M....I ain't gonna do it...made me laugh.

I also like the most recent theory about cat domestication. Scientists are beginning to think that cats just moved in and stayed. Basically, cats domesticated themselves. People let them stay because they got rid of the rodents that ate the human food, and they weren't big enough to pose any threat to humans. Makes sense to me, especially when I'm being stomped on at 4 am because somekitty thinks that breakfast is late.

 

[welsummerchicks]

Actually Pat, I have seen a rebuttal to the study where the reviewer questioned the conclusions on exactly that basis. And the reviewer said that such cribbing marks have been found on the teeth of wild horses.

My horse, actually, has exactly the kind of 'cribbing marks' (outer edges of front grasping teeth beveled) the researcher described, on her teeth and she doesn't even crib.

I think they can get such marks from grubbing around when starving, or being like my horse, who picks up everything and plays with it. My horse even has a 'holding the wheelbarrow handle and pumping it up and down' muscle on the top of her kneck that sticks out like popeye's arms(no, we don't take it away from her because we can't actually deprive her of anything, she runs the place here, and we are just her lowly handmaidens, provided for her amusement - vet/dentist/trainer all say it does her no harm anyway).

I doubt horses thousands of years ago had much extra energy for playing with things, but I don't doubt that they were grubbing and starving.

Too, even when confined only some horses crib, if such marks are found on many horses, I don't think it's positive proof of confinement.

Positive proof is different from 'maybe'. He was taking it as absolute proof positive.

These days, it's awful hard to get an unassailable conclusion in archaeology. It can't be from one clue, but from a whole lot of stuff all added up together, that make a whole picture. Otherwise your colleagues are all going, 'Myeh!'

And if yu think dressage people get worked up discussing the definition of dressage termrs or how best to train a horse, yiou REALLY need to meet a bunch of archaeologists arguing about ....about ANYTHING to do with archaeology! THE FUR WILL FLY! Leather elbow patches will be wrent from tweed jackets!!!

I say maybe being confined, maybe grubbing for feed, and if only a few, cribbing is possible.

It first I was thinking of it as, 'ooooh! what a smart guy!' and then I started thinking about it and getting more and more 'duh......really?'

I'm siding with the other reprobates who say that the marks in question need not be from cribbing and that even wild non confined horses will crib.

It brings up other scientific issues as well.

'How do we know this is people poo and not some other poo?

But I did pick up on one thing. It actually was dog, not wolf, not jackal.

DOG. That's pretty cool.

It's starting to look like 'Year One' WAS an accurate picture, LOL.

'I made a shelf unit for my hut...'

 

[EweSheep]

It made me think of the Flintstones!

It is possible that cavemen may have allowed dogs, like any human, have some empathy and see dog, not only as their food source but companionship, and guardian. It was not a quick domestication, it evolved over time and "wolves" became "tame wild dogs" and then when we got a bigger brain, ah ha! I can create my own dog!

I don't know how they would determined if it was human or chimp poo of thousands of years old. After all, we ate like them according to the availablity of plants, seeds and hunting seasons.

 

[SillyChicken]

Once the American Indians domesticated the dogs, they were used as burden animals and food supply when food was scarce... The horse didn't really arrive until the Europeans did. There was a type of horse in the US, but didn't it die out long ago?

Doesn't surprise me a bit that dogs were eaten way back when.