Friday, January 28, 2011
Early humans may have preferred the fox to the dog as an animal companion, new archaeological findings suggest. Researchers analysing remains at a prehistoric burial ground in Jordan have uncovered a grave in which a fox was buried with a human, before part of it was then transferred to an adjacent grave.
The University of Cambridge-led team believes that the unprecedented case points to some sort of emotional attachment between human and fox. Their paper, published January 26, suggests that the fox may have been kept as a pet and was being buried to accompany its master, or mistress, to the afterlife.
If so, it marks the first known burial of its kind and suggests that long before we began to hunt foxes using dogs, our ancestors were keeping them as pets – and doing so earlier than their canine relatives.
The cemetery, at Uyun-al-Hammam, in northern Jordan, is about 16,500 years old, which makes the grave 4,000 years older than the earliest known human-dog burial and 7,000 years earlier than anything similar in Europe involving a fox.
Early humans may have preferred the fox to the dog as an animal companion, new archaeological findings suggest. Researchers analysing remains at a prehistoric burial ground in Jordan have uncovered a grave in which a fox was buried with a human, before part of it was then transferred to an adjacent grave.
The University of Cambridge-led team believes that the unprecedented case points to some sort of emotional attachment between human and fox. Their paper, published January 26, suggests that the fox may have been kept as a pet and was being buried to accompany its master, or mistress, to the afterlife.
If so, it marks the first known burial of its kind and suggests that long before we began to hunt foxes using dogs, our ancestors were keeping them as pets – and doing so earlier than their canine relatives.
The cemetery, at Uyun-al-Hammam, in northern Jordan, is about 16,500 years old, which makes the grave 4,000 years older than the earliest known human-dog burial and 7,000 years earlier than anything similar in Europe involving a fox.
Rest of article.
My take - it's divinatory, darlings :)
Fascinating!
ReplyDeleteI love foxes. I live in a rural location, and put out some dog food and dog biscuits, every night. Foxes come for it, just after dusk.
You might find this post I did on the Dogon fox divination ritual of interest:
ReplyDeletehttp://goddesschess.blogspot.com/2010/05/fox-in-dogon-divination-ritual.html
...epatl(Nauatl)=zorillo(sp)=skunk,
ReplyDeletehmmm, epazotl(N)=comestible herb used
to calm digested frijoles/chispas/
sparks. poyaua(N)=of many colors,=
poyoy(Mayan)=skunk. fox/pox/zatl=
pozatl(N)=glutton, capricious,
extravagant, inflated/swelling?,
(hydrophobia/rabies?),=pozonallotl
(N)=spume/froth, hmmm,=pozonini(N)=
irritated, exasperated, full of
rabia(sp)/rabies/raving/furor.
guess that's fox/pox, also,
the Mexican dish, pozole=pozoni(N)=
boil=b/olinia(N).
sure they were pets, the Mayan
women had rac-coons=r/l/tlaca on(N)=
the body on/at a distance, perhpas
a warning, but in Nauatl=Mapach=
Mapache(Mex)=hand/ma-paca/washer,
helps with the dishes?