8,000 YEAR OLD DEPICTIONS OF DOMESTIC CANINES:

Leashed dogs and hunter, petroglyphs, Shuwaymis, Saudi Arabia. Internet photograph, public domain.

A team of archaeologists from the Max Planck Institute and Saudi Arabian Commission for Tourism and National Heritage has been recording rock art in Northwestern Saudi Arabia.

One fascinating category of images consists of hunting scenes in which bow and arrow armed humans are accompanied by dogs, some of which seem to have lines connecting them to the hunters – a leash? They also believe that according to their estimated age of these petroglyphs that they represent the oldest known portrayals of canines, at least domesticated canines.

Dogs and hunters, petroglyphs, Shuwaymis, Saudi Arabia. Internet photograph, public domain.

“The hunting scene comes from Shuwaymis, a hilly region of northwestern Saudi Arabia where seasonal rains once formed rivers and supported pockets of dense vegetation. For the past 3 years, Maria Gaugnin, and archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany – in partnership with the Saudi Commission for Tourism & National Heritage – has helped catalog more than 1400 rock art panels containing nearly 7000 animals and humans at Shuwaymis and Jubba, a more open vista about 200 kilometers north that was once dotted with lakes.” (Grimm 2017)

Climatic warming has severely dried this area to what is now more like arid desert, but in the past it was wetter and with more vegetation to encourage animal life.

Aurochs hunt, Shuwaymis, Saudi Arabia. Internet image, public domain.

“Starting about 10,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers entered – or perhaps returned to – the region. What appear to be the oldest images are thought to date to this time and depict curvy women. Then about 7000 to 8000 years ago, people here became herders, based on livestock bones found at Jubbah: that’s likely when pictures of cattle, sheep, and goats began to dominate the images. In between – carved on top of the women and under the livestock – are the early hunting dogs: 156 at Shuwaymis and 193 at Jubbah. All are medium-sized, with pricked up ears, short snouts, and curled tails – hallmarks of domestic canines. In some scenes, the dogs face off against wild donkeys. In others they bite the necks and bellies of ibexes and gazelles. And in many, they are tethered to a human armed with a bow and arrow.” (Grimm 2017) So, in a considerable array of canine images, some few are connected to human figures by lines or tethers which are considered to be possible leashes while most are not.

Hunter with two leashed dogs and a pack of unleashed dogs. Photograph by M. Guagnin.

 “We already knew that pre-Neolithic humans used domesticated dogs for hunting purposes, but details about how exactly they went about this have remained unclear. The 147 hunting scenes the researchers have been studiously documenting at sites in Shuwaymis and Jubbah, in northwestern Saudi Arabia, show a range of possible roles. A paper detailing the research was published in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. ‘When (corresponding author Maria Guagnin) came to me with the rock art photos and asked me if they meant anything, I about lost my mind,’ co-author Angela Perri, who studies animal archaeology at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Archaeology in Leipzig, Germany, told Science Magazine. ‘A million bones won’t tell me what these images are telling me,’ she says. ‘It’s the closest thing you’re going to get to a YouTube video.’” (Medrano 2017)

No dating is available for these ancient petroglyphs so the researchers had to estimate their potential ages by looking at the stratigraphy of the rock art itself (the sequence in which the images were carved). “The researchers couldn’t directly date the images, but based on the sequence of carving, the weathering of the rock, and the timing of the switch to pastoralism, ‘The dog art is at least 8000 to 9000 years old,’ Guagnin says. That may edge out depictions of dogs previously labeled the oldest, paintings on Iranian pottery dated to at most 8000 years ago.” (Grimm 2017)

“Even if the art is younger than Guagnin and her colleagues think, the leashes are by far the oldest on record. Until now, the earliest evidence for such restraints came from a wall painting in Egypt dated to about 5500 years ago, Perri says. The Arabian hunters may have used the leashes to keep valuable scent dogs close and protected, she says, or to train new dogs. Leashing dogs to the hunter’s waist may have freed his hands for the bow and arrow.” (Grimm 2017) Here, the writer is implying that the hunters used two types of dogs, or had dogs fulfilling two roles. The “scent dogs” would be the ones with the most sensitive noses for tracking by scent, while the other “sight hounds” would be the pack of visual hunters who handled the pursuit and cornering of the game. Some game animals could actually be taken down by the pack while larger game such as aurochs could be cornered until the hunters came up with weapons to end the confrontation. Grimm is also implying that the “scent dogs,” being more valuable, were the ones on the leash while the pack hounds were free to pursue, corner, and possibly be injured by large game.

Wild Ass hunt, Shuwaymis, Saudi Arabia. Internet pnotograph, public domain.

“Dogs can realize a decrease in search costs and an increase in prey encounter rates by flushing and finding animals. These characteristics may be especially important with pedestrian hunts where pray resources that are highly dispersed or have low densities, are cryptic or fossorial, and/or occupy biomes with heavy vegetation and rugged terrain. Reductions in search costs become less beneficial with prey that use habitual paths or runways or that are highly predictable in location and where hunting require(s) stealth and ambush strategies and the use of some stationary technology (traps, snares). Dogs can also reduce the handling costs association with prey acquisition by distracting or baying dangerous animals, pursuing wounded prey and finding carcasses of animals that have been killed. The latter characteristics are especially advantageous with the use of certain kinds of dispatch technology that do not always immediately kill the animals, such as poisoned arrows or in heavily vegetated areas and rugged terrain where locating dead animals is difficult. The ability of dogs to chase and locate a wounded and dying animal or the carcass of one that has died from its wounds is a critical factor that reduces the chances of hunting failure and improves success.” (Lupo 2017) While all of these factors are germane, Lupo overlooks the value of the “scent dogs” in following a game animals trail in situations where visual clues are absent. This is also one method in which the dog can locate the “wounded and dying animal” mentioned, by following the scent.

Canaan Dog, Wikipedia. Photograph by Hodowla Samorodok Hanaana.

“The dogs look a lot like today’s Canaan dog, says Perri, a largely feral breed that roams the deserts of the Middle East. That could indicate that these ancient people bred dogs that had already adapted to hunting in the desert, the team reports in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. Or people may even have independently domesticated these dogs from the Arabian wolf long after dogs were domesticated elsewhere, which likely happened sometime between 15,000 and 30,000 years ago.” (Grimm 2017) The existence of the Canaan dog in Arabia is known from at least 9000 years ago. “The Canaan Dog is the oldest breed of pariah dog still existing and abundant across the Middle East. It can be found in Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and the Sinai Peninsula, and these, or dogs nearly identical were also found in Iraq and Syria over 9000 years ago.” (Wikipedia)

The origins of the domesticated dog have been much in the news (at least the scientific news) of late and that question has not yet been settled, but, for now, it appears that we do know the first rock art picturing domesticated dogs.

 

NOTE: Some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.

REFERENCES:

Grimm, David, 2017, These may be the world’s first images of dogs – and they’re wearing leashes, 16 November 2017, https://www.science.org

Lupo, Karen D., 2017, When and where do dogs improve hunting productivity? The empirical record and some implications for early Upper Paleolithic prey acquisition, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 47 (2017) 139-151.