New Scientist
Image: Mark Beery Photography
Even in the Stone Age, humans may have loved their dogs. A reanalysis of a prehistoric dog that was buried with two humans reveals that the animal had experienced several bouts of potentially lethal illness. The fact it survived suggests its owners cared for their dog as a pet.
The Bonn-Oberkassel dog was unearthed a century ago in Germany, alongside the remains of a man in his 40s and a woman in her 20s. All are about 14,200 years old.
The dog probably lived long after dogs were domesticated, as evidence for domestication stretches back at least 32,000 years. But the Bonn-Oberkassel dog is still a key specimen because it is the oldest known dog burial, says Luc Janssens at Ghent University in Belgium. That means it can help us understand why dogs were domesticated.
Researchers have often assumed that humans domesticated dogs so they could put them to work. Maybe the first dogs helped us hunt, guarded settlements or were used as pack dogs for transport.
However, Janssens and his colleagues say there is an alternative: that humans domesticated dogs simply because they liked having them as pets. Read more on newscientist.com…
