chicot60
02-04-2011, 12:50 AM
The 16,500-year-old graveyard, excavated by University of Toronto anthropologists Lisa Maher and Ted Banning — along with colleagues from Britain's University of Cambridge — sheds light on "the beginnings of domestication of dog-like animals," the researchers state in a summary of their study, published in the latest issue of the Public Library of Science journal, PLoS ONE.
The burial ground at 'Uyun al-Hammam was discovered in 2000 during an expedition led by Maher and Banning in the Jordanian river valley of Wadi Ziqlab. Since then, digging at the site has uncovered a number of ancient graves, most of them dating from 12,000 to 15,000 years ago, when a prehistoric, hunter-gatherer culture known as the Natufians occupied the area.
The latest discovery includes the graves of 11 individuals from at least 1,500 years earlier. These people, possibly the ancestors of the Natufians, are known as the Geometric Kebaran culture because of the distinctive, angular hunting blades they made by chipping shards of flint.
By Randy Boswell, Postmedia News
http://www.montrealgazette.com/technology/4220684.bin
The remains of a red fox found at a human burial site in northern Jordan are being described as the oldest pet after being found at a cemetery in the Middle East.Photograph by: Handout, PLoS OneA Canadian-led team of researchers that discovered the oldest cemetery in the Middle East has also unearthed the remains of a red fox — buried alongside a human at the site in northern Jordan — that appears to be the world's earliest-known pet.
Among the Kebaran burials, Maher told Postmedia News, were the remains of one individual who was carefully laid to rest with the fox in a "special way" that signified some kind of significant, human-animal relationship not seen by archeologists in earlier burials of the ancient world.
"Foxes are relatively easy to tame, and can live quite well in close proximity to humans," said Maher, co-director of the U of T's Wadi Ziqlab Project and a research associate at Cambridge. "It is not inconceivable that this may have been a tame fox that was a pet or that foxes had some spiritual significance."
She noted that while other animal remains are found in human burials from the Kebaran era, the careful placement of the fox "represents a significant social relationship, something that clearly goes far beyond the domestication of animals as livestock."
The fox's burial, added Banning, seemed to be comparable to the human-dog burials from more than a millennium later in the graves of Natufian people at the Jordanian dig site.
"Since this is the first time a fox burial like this has been found, it is difficult to be sure what it means," Banning said.
But he added that the Kebarans "may have started to forge relationships with foxes" many centuries before their successor cultures finally chose dogs to become man's best friend.
The fox's skittish, timid nature may have led the early humans to bond with dogs instead, the researchers suggest.
Banning speculated that foxes may have initially been tamed "to help in certain kinds of hunting" or that foxes, "like wolves and early dogs, scavenged food scraps around camp" and gradually befriended early humans.
"However, this is only one possibility, as there could also be symbolic or ideological reasons for including fox remains in the grave."
But there was further evidence that the fox and human buried side by side at 'Uyun al-Hammam were companions.
The researchers determined that at some point after the original burial, the remains of both the human and the fox were moved to an adjacent site.
"What we appear to have found is a case where a fox was killed and buried with its owner," Maher said in the study summary. "Later, the grave was reopened for some reason and the human's body was moved. But because the link between the fox and the human had been significant, the fox was moved as well."
Read more: http://www.canada.com/technology/hav...#ixzz1CwifCCQK
The burial ground at 'Uyun al-Hammam was discovered in 2000 during an expedition led by Maher and Banning in the Jordanian river valley of Wadi Ziqlab. Since then, digging at the site has uncovered a number of ancient graves, most of them dating from 12,000 to 15,000 years ago, when a prehistoric, hunter-gatherer culture known as the Natufians occupied the area.
The latest discovery includes the graves of 11 individuals from at least 1,500 years earlier. These people, possibly the ancestors of the Natufians, are known as the Geometric Kebaran culture because of the distinctive, angular hunting blades they made by chipping shards of flint.
By Randy Boswell, Postmedia News
http://www.montrealgazette.com/technology/4220684.bin
The remains of a red fox found at a human burial site in northern Jordan are being described as the oldest pet after being found at a cemetery in the Middle East.Photograph by: Handout, PLoS OneA Canadian-led team of researchers that discovered the oldest cemetery in the Middle East has also unearthed the remains of a red fox — buried alongside a human at the site in northern Jordan — that appears to be the world's earliest-known pet.
Among the Kebaran burials, Maher told Postmedia News, were the remains of one individual who was carefully laid to rest with the fox in a "special way" that signified some kind of significant, human-animal relationship not seen by archeologists in earlier burials of the ancient world.
"Foxes are relatively easy to tame, and can live quite well in close proximity to humans," said Maher, co-director of the U of T's Wadi Ziqlab Project and a research associate at Cambridge. "It is not inconceivable that this may have been a tame fox that was a pet or that foxes had some spiritual significance."
She noted that while other animal remains are found in human burials from the Kebaran era, the careful placement of the fox "represents a significant social relationship, something that clearly goes far beyond the domestication of animals as livestock."
The fox's burial, added Banning, seemed to be comparable to the human-dog burials from more than a millennium later in the graves of Natufian people at the Jordanian dig site.
"Since this is the first time a fox burial like this has been found, it is difficult to be sure what it means," Banning said.
But he added that the Kebarans "may have started to forge relationships with foxes" many centuries before their successor cultures finally chose dogs to become man's best friend.
The fox's skittish, timid nature may have led the early humans to bond with dogs instead, the researchers suggest.
Banning speculated that foxes may have initially been tamed "to help in certain kinds of hunting" or that foxes, "like wolves and early dogs, scavenged food scraps around camp" and gradually befriended early humans.
"However, this is only one possibility, as there could also be symbolic or ideological reasons for including fox remains in the grave."
But there was further evidence that the fox and human buried side by side at 'Uyun al-Hammam were companions.
The researchers determined that at some point after the original burial, the remains of both the human and the fox were moved to an adjacent site.
"What we appear to have found is a case where a fox was killed and buried with its owner," Maher said in the study summary. "Later, the grave was reopened for some reason and the human's body was moved. But because the link between the fox and the human had been significant, the fox was moved as well."
Read more: http://www.canada.com/technology/hav...#ixzz1CwifCCQK