Animal Domestication and Early Pets

Neo-Assyrian relief depicting dogs being used to hunt lions,
7th century BCE. London: British Museum.

Originally published on my World History class blog on September 10, 2016.

During our discussion of animal domestication the other day, a question came up about when humans began to keep pets. I did some digging and came up with some resources and news articles on the topic.

The first news deals with the domestication of the dog. Your textbook, while up-to-date on many topics, seems to be behind the latest research on dog domestication. While the conventional narrative dates it to 15,000 years ago, a number of more recent finds challenge that idea, using archaeological evidence to push the date as far back as 30,000 years ago. This blog post  (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.from 2008 discusses some of this research shortly after it came out (it contains a link to the scientists' findings, as well, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science). A 2011 article from the Wall Street Journal (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. also deals with this topic, referencing even more recent finds. This is an interesting read if you want to learn more about the process of domestication. The author, historian Mark Derr, notes that this was not a one-sided process - some wolves felt it was as useful to have us around as we felt it was to have them!

For an overview of what animals were domesticated by humans, when, and why, check out this very comprehensive article (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.from the popular history website History World.

Sculpture of the Egyptian cat-goddess Bastet, discovered in the Kom el-Dekkah area of Alexandria. 

As for the first evidence of pets, the most frequently cited evidence is a Natufian grave found at a site called Ain Mallaha in Israel from around 12,000 years ago, in which an old man was buried with a puppy. Competing with that, however, is a 2011 find from Jordan at the Uyun al-Hammam burial site dated to 16,500 years ago. A red fox was found buried in a grave at this site. While animals were sometimes sacrificed as part of the burial process, this case seems to be different. Part of the fox's skeleton is found in one grave, and the remaining pieces are in another. Archaeologists believe that one of the individuals had been buried with the fox, and then for some reason the grave was opened and the body moved. Since the individual had a special bond with the fox, it was moved as well (though incompletely). While foxes have never been completely domesticated, it is very likely that this one was being kept as a pet. You can read about the fox burial here (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site..

Finally, if you are interested in more detailed stories about pets in the ancient world, these two pages from the popular history website Ancient History Encyclopedia provide some good ones: the first is on dogs in the ancient world  (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.and the second is on all sorts of pets in ancient Egypt (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.. Some highlights include: the ancient Egyptian word for dog (iwiw), which was based on the sound of its bark; the later Greek historian Herodotus' claim that Egyptians shaved all the hair on their bodies (as a gesture of mourning) when their household dog died; the mummified pet gazelle of the Egyptian Queen Isiemkheb; and the story from the Indian epic poem The Mahabharata about King Yudisthira and his dog, who follows him on his journey to the afterlife.

Enjoy!

Chloe Dog, enjoying the autumn sun.