Dogs lived and died with humans 10,000 years ago in the Americas

Science News ^ | April 16, 2018 | Bruce Bower

[C19fan]

A trio of dogs buried at two ancient human sites in Illinois lived around 10,000 years ago, making them the oldest known domesticated canines in the Americas.

Radiocarbon dating of the dogs’ bones shows they were 1,500 years older than thought, zooarchaeologist Angela Perri said April 13 at the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The previous age estimate was based on a radiocarbon analysis of burned wood found in one of the animals’ graves. Until now, nearly 9,300-year-old remains of dogs eaten by humans at a Texas site were the oldest physical evidence of American canines.

[Unassuaged]

Thank you for your input. /s

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

You would be hard pressed to find a culture that did not eat dogs at some point.

Meat is meat when you are starving.

[gundog]

Iguana.

[sparklite2]

They never figured out the wheel, did they?

[Darteaus94025]

They didn’t have anything to pull a wagon - except for buffalo.

[blam]

Does your son still work at the Savannah River Facility?

[GingisK]

If they lived together back then, then they most certainly died together as well. ;-D

[Alas Babylon!]

Chihuahua. No seriously. They were breed for food.

[fella]

Fast food Aztec style.

[HP8753]

Probably put their neighbors in tacos. ;-)

[Cronos]

I think it was probably a last option — not worth it for most cases (ignoring the usefulness of a dog when it is alive)

[Cronos]

good looking dogs. And, I’m sure, healthier than the “breed” dogs

[Cronos]

I just bought that on Amazon Kindle. Thank you for this suggestion, blam

[Cronos]

Actually they did invent the wheel. But it remained a toy, not more as they didn't have any beasts of burden

We forget just how lucky Eurasians were to have:

• Domesticable crops: wheat, barley ,rice - these are native only to Eurasia and the first two to the fertile Crescent in the Middle East. In contrast the Americas had only corn - and corn lacks the important amino acids tryptophan and lycine, it's best eaten in combination with beans in order to avoid protein deficiency -- the early Pilgrims died of this. Also note that while barley and wheat are somewhat like their ancestors, the ancestors of corn are not even recognizable and barely any nutrition, so the native Americans had a harder time
  
  
• Beasts of burden/animals to husband: Eurasia had horses, cows, camels, sheep, goats, pigs. the Americas had only bison and those were not domesticable - they aren't even domesticated today -- and llams in Peru (far from MesoAmerica and across the equator, so no natural way for it to spread

[afraidfortherepublic]

Nice. My son was going to find me one of those, but he never did. Instead, I bought another Golden Retriever who has turned out to be the GR from Hell! (Actually, he’s just a rambunctious puppy who is a little more than I can handle. He’s a little more than 1 1/2 yrs. old and is calming down VERY SLOWLY.)

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks C19fan.

[BenLurkin]

Is that Jon Podesta on the rock? That’s probably how he wants to go out.

[ApplegateRanch]

Anything you can swallow, keep down, and not die, has “Chinese traditional medicinal value”, it seems.