© (Top to bottom): Alexandra Baranova/Wikimedia Commons; M.Guagnin et al., Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 2017The ancient hunting dogs of Saudi Arabia (bottom) may have resembled the Canaan breed of dog (top).
Carved into a sandstone cliff on the edge of a bygone river in the Arabian Desert, a hunter draws his bow for the kill. He is accompanied by 13 dogs, each with its own coat markings; two animals have lines running from their necks to the man's waist.
The engravings likely date back more than 8000 years, making them the earliest depictions of dogs, a new study reveals. And those lines are probably leashes, suggesting that humans mastered the art of training and controlling dogs thousands of years earlier than previously thought.
"It's truly astounding stuff," says Melinda Zeder, an archaeozoologist at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. "It's the only real demonstration we have of humans using early dogs to hunt." But she cautions that more work will be needed to confirm both the age and meaning of the depictions.
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 Guagnin, an 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
Jubbah, a more open vista about 200 kilometers north that was once dotted with lakes.
Comment: