After all the palavering, the only thing that can be said with certainty is, the buried dogs in groups, individually, and with human remains. Everything else is speculation.
This is such a perversion of the scientific method. All one has to do is state a hypothesis and it stands until further research can supplant it. When the tales and fables are spun in the first instance out of just imagination, where would one go to get further information. Since this is prehistoric, there will be no smoking gun; ergo, the first fiction stands. This is what represents scientific inquiry in so many fields.
There is such an incestuous relationship in the “scientific” community that few will challenge others else they run the risk of being branded a heretic.
burroak - not only is it a perversion of the scientific method, it doesn’t state the obvious - “large groups” of dogs buried with humans means one of two things - the dogs were massacred, or the dogs were buried alive - so much of the scientific reporting on pre-Columbian peoples exaggerates their achievements and conceals their barbarity - compare that to the scientific reporting on the primitive peoples of Europe.
Thanks for the sceptical, scientific view of the story. I’m a dog lover, and this comment may upset some, but unless there are written records to explain the reason the dogs were part of the burials, there are other possible explanations. One other possibility is that they intended to send the dogs along as a box lunch for the departed.