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Dogs in Ancient Greece with Dr. Alyce Cannon (Part 1) - Ep 005
207 Plays11 days ago
In this episode of ethnocynology David sits down with recently minted PhD, Dr Alyce Cannon.
David and Elise have known each other for the past 5 years through their work talking about dogs on social media. Alyce is a Sydney Australia based classicist and archaeologist who did her research on the ancient world and human animal interactions in ancient Greece specifically.
David and Alyce begin by catching up on life and David congratulates her on recently achieving her status as a phd. They then catch up about the state of the world and American versus Australian culture.
The meat of the episode then begins where Elise starts talking about her dissertation (or thesis) regarding human and animal interactions in ancient Greece and how dogs appear in pottery, zooarchaeology, and in oral tradition. and specifically, the oral tradition is quite interesting as a lot of stories refer to dogs derogatorily, and how that changes to a more positive light over time.
They then end the episode on the subject of a future episode where dogs in Warfare and their roles in everyday life can be discussed.
Https://ww.instagram.com/historydoggos/
Transcripts
- For rough transcripts of this episode go to https://www.archpodnet.com/ethnocynology/05
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Transcript
Introduction and Friendship Origins
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:13
Speaker
Welcome to episode five of Ethnocynology. I'm here with my good friend, Elise Cannon, who is now Dr. Elise Cannon, right? Yep. I'm going to say Cannon is correct, right? Cannon is correct. It all sounds weird, but yep.
00:00:28
Speaker
yeah you are history doggos on instagram and when i started my instagram you were like also there and like the first like account i found and then we've been friends for i think five years now Yeah, it's about that. It's been a while. It has been a while. Whenever you FaceTime doing Out of the Blue one time and we just talked and you were on your back porch, just chilling. I think we were talking about- Trading Australianisms and how to pronounce things and weird sayings that Australians have. That's right. I remember Crack the Shits. I specifically remember that. Crack the Shits. Yeah, that's a good one.
00:01:06
Speaker
There's several others. I don't have to go so hard in the beginning of this. But anyway, yeah, just I'd love to people know how you're doing. Like what what are you up to do these days?
Elise's Personal Journey and Hobbies
00:01:13
Speaker
I'm doing pretty well. So I haven't written anything since finishing thesis. I've been quietly pottering away on a few things, but I've just kind of been trying to prioritize my mental health and rent wellbeing by doing literally anything else other than researching and writing.
00:01:37
Speaker
which has been excellent. And I'm now just starting to transition back into turning my thesis into a book and writing some articles and things. And the retraumatization has been very quick. So yeah, yeah, it's been good, but important to take a break and do things that, you know, do hobbies again. I haven't had a hobby in forever. What are you into now?
00:02:06
Speaker
do a lot of embroidery. Okay. Yeah. I know it's so random, but I embroider, you know, flowers and animals. Usually I'm at the age now, so I'm 36 turning 37 and all of my friends are having children. So I just now have this skill set that I can just embroider their newborns things and everyone's really happy. And yeah I don't have to spend money on presents for babies that are going to grow out of them.
00:02:37
Speaker
Ooh, that's really true. Yeah. Yeah. And it's personalized. So you know it's very sweet and things like embroidery and crosswords and drawing, like they calm my mind. So.
Productivity and Academic Pressures
00:02:50
Speaker
yeah which is very, very important when you do a PhD with ADHD and autism. right You need things that can quiet the thousand different thought patterns happening in your brain at any given time. Yeah, no, completely understandable. I think I said on the first or second episode of the show that my account and my YouTube and stuff exists because school has traumatized me so much that you have to be working on something, that just sitting at home and watching TV like gives me a panic attack. I have to be producing something or researching something. Yeah, you're definitely a product of that. Like capitalism, right? Like you gotta be hustling, gotta get that money, make that bread, make that money, get that bread, whatever the saying is. Yeah, I think part of it's just our culture here and then also like
00:03:42
Speaker
Yeah, academia does a number on your, not just your psyche, but like your physical like body. You're like, i I have to be your learning. I can't even get into that in too much detail, but suffice it to say I've lost like 16 kilos since finishing. I'm not sure what that is in pounds. I'm terrible with your weird conversions. You strange, strange people. I'll get with the rest of the world, but come on. I don't understand it either. It seems so much easier to just do the other stuff. Just, yeah, I know. But you guys, you got to be special. You got to be different. It's fine. What can you do? Yeah, that I've lost like heaps of weight since finishing PhD. And I think a big part of that is also just emotional baggage. Right. Just all of the, you know, like the weight of doing the study, doing all of these things then just becomes physical weight manifested. So it's nice to it's like going through a breakup, you know, and you lose all of that breakup.
00:04:44
Speaker
at your revenge body. Now I'm just trying to get my PhD revenge body. Yeah. I was actually telling my nutritionist about that. She's like, what happened last year when you were doing really good? And I was like, I was angry about a breakup.
00:04:55
Speaker
but I was very fit. Now I don't have a breakup, so I'm just eating Sour Patch Kids playing video games. ah Not doing good for me. Do you guys have Sour Patch Kids there? I think so, but I don't eat them. Okay. That's fair. That's fair. Would you have like, I'm not really a sour person, like the sour candies. You're a chocolate person? Yeah. Okay. More chocolate.
00:05:21
Speaker
I respect chocolate and I like it if it's given to me. Wait, I remember sending you candy one time. I sent you some three months or something. It was like Halloween candy. Yes, it was Halloween candy, but most importantly, it was Bernie Sanders presidential campaign poster. That's right. e i Which I framed and I still have. Good. and you know He's a goat. I feel very special. People did think I was weird for a while, walking around with a Bernie 2020 shirt in Sydney. It'd be like you wearing
00:05:57
Speaker
You know, like we had this political campaign in 2007 and the slogan, it's so Australian, the slogan was Kevin 07 because the future prime minister, his name was Kevin and the year was 07. So we're very creative as well. But it'd be like you walking around wherever, where are you living now?
00:06:19
Speaker
Currently I'm in Wyoming. So it'd be working around Wyoming with Kevin. Oh sevens red shirt. People would be like, what the hell? Yeah, they wouldn't know. You're like, that that weird David guy again. My favorite guy's names on his shirt.
00:06:36
Speaker
kevin o seven I'm going to get one just because of that. Not to get too political, but just like Bernie now, because he's not running. Everybody loves, like even Republicans are like, yeah, he's good. but he the voice the bra and but Yeah. And it's like now that he's not running for president, they're like, Oh, he's great. Or it was like, he's the saint he's a devil. And she's like, all right. But I didn't say that. They said he's a socialist and
Archaeological Adventures in Greece and Cyprus
00:07:00
Speaker
and all that. but We're here to talk dogs. It's basically the same thing. yeah yeah to To rural Americans, yeah. So you went to school in Sydney and then you did your, was it postdoc research? You had a fellowship in Greece?
00:07:16
Speaker
Yeah, I did. I did my bachelor's, my honours and my master's and all of my PhD at the University of Sydney. and They just couldn't get rid of me at all. Yeah. And so in 2022, I got a fellowship with the Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens, which is um kind of the Australian research school for Greek archaeology and history, and they have a base in in Athens. and They gave me free accommodation and flights and a little bit of a stipend to go and live there for there for almost 18 months.
00:07:57
Speaker
And so I did my very first dig in Cyprus, in Paphos, working on a Hellenistic theatre. But mainly I was going to the different schools all around Athens, because there's about 17 different international schools by all the different countries that have permits to excavate all around Greece, because there's obviously a lot of archaeological sites there.
00:08:23
Speaker
and they have an amazing archives and site drawings and just things that I wouldn't have been able to find online in Australia. And it was also just really important to live in the city that I have been researching and writing about for 14 years just to get a sense of like the physical space. And there is, you know, I'm not like a big woo woo person or anything like that, but there is something to be said about being in that environment, being in that culture, especially Australian culture is so different from Greek culture. So I always felt like I was a little bit of a fraud writing about stuff that I'd only read in books and I've only
00:09:07
Speaker
like seen pictures of in online databases. So I needed to be there. No, it was go sam total sense. Sorry. continue Oh yeah. No, it was, it was just amazing. Um, trip of a lifetime. Take me back all of that stuff. Yeah. I think it is, I mean, not that it's not talked about, it's just like something you can't really do until you experience it is like,
00:09:32
Speaker
Especially here in Wyoming, how rural and empty and undeveloped it is, because it's just wilderness. Being out here hiking with my dog and stuff, like you do get much more of a sense of how the people used to live here off the land. Whereas like in New York City, you can understand hunter-gatherer archaeology from a book, but you're not going to get it the way you will out here. Yeah, exactly. So I imagine going to Greece and being around all that, hearing the language like call it's got to be.
00:09:59
Speaker
You know, it it can only help you. It's true. There's only so much I could have learned from Assassin's Creed Odyssey. as refer Thank you. That's also my thesis. I won't lie twice. But, you know, video games like that, they give you kind of, you know, ah an abridged version of what you would imagine things to look like. But unless you're there, you know, in Athens, there are so many ancient roads that are still around and obviously temples and ruins everywhere. And the city plan is
00:10:34
Speaker
still based around these sides. So when you are walking around, it's like, oh yeah, I can see how this works. And then I obviously had to fight the urge every time I saw a mountain or something to use my special assassin's skill to climb up it and collect my ore or whatever I needed, like my special equipment.
00:11:02
Speaker
But and that was an actual thing. That's the the neurodivergent brain and being like, oh, yeah, I could. Yeah, I just need to, you know, like using your shift W and like, just keep walking up and we'll be we'll be sweet. You played on the computer even more respect. Cool. Yeah. Sweet. Oh, yeah. I have a gaming laptop. shop I'm legit. OK, cool. I've been sucked into Red Dead to like the past.
00:11:28
Speaker
so relaxing though. It really is because you're just out there like unfortunately skinning animals left and right for hours but you're like it's so peaceful out here and then the bounty hunters come after you but yeah it's like going sailing on my on my trirene my giant greek boat in assassin's creed i'm like cool then my you know my crew starts singing ancient greek songs like and then a pirate ship will come and like shoot some arrows at me or something but other than that very relaxing Right. I mean, you can't really avoid that. yeah So maybe some pirates in the Mediterranean. Yeah. I imagine back in the down, this is a different subject entirely in its own podcast, but I imagine the Mediterranean was just littered with pirates from all over.
00:12:12
Speaker
Yeah, it's a big reason why i'm most of the biggest ancient Greek settlements are all along the coast, because obviously it's better access to water, but also safer to ah kind of sail as close to to the shore as possible.
00:12:27
Speaker
Otherwise you might get good point get attacked, looted, all of the fun things. And if you're just on a little, you know, the bigger boats are obviously for the bigger naval powers and stuff. But if you're just ah just a humble peasant looking for a new start in a different colony, then safer to be along the shores. Yeah. Head on over to Syracuse. Cool. Cool. Okay. So you were doing that there and you got to do a dig, you said?
00:12:56
Speaker
Yeah, so the University of Sydney has had this dig site in Paphos in on the Greek side of Cyprus for 30 years, I think 40 years, maybe even longer. And they've been gradually excavating a Hellenistic public theatre.
00:13:14
Speaker
which has been really, really cool. And so I got to go in May last year and just hang out there for a couple of weeks and get to know a lot of the archaeologists that are working there. A lot of people are working on different things. Some are working on pottery. Some are working on medieval period. Some are Hellenistic specialists because that site, you know, Cyprus has such a rich history of all these different kind of occupations and cultural influences over certain centuries.
00:13:44
Speaker
that every layer, there's a completely different sort of culture there. So you can find you know Venetian stuff and and Turkish stuff, and then late Roman Hellenistic, so all the different like pottery styles and building styles, but they're recycling all of the materials and things. So it's really cool.
00:14:06
Speaker
Yeah, that's so cool. I noticed that in Rome and in Jerusalem, there's like just especially Rome too. You could see like the Roman stuff, but then clearly the Renaissance era stuff and then modern stuff just stacked. And then Jerusalem, it's like Ottoman and then Roman and then, you know, everything else is just like.
00:14:24
Speaker
I don't have that in Chicago. okay yeah We didn't have that in Australia either. We had yeah like 60,000 years of First
Colonization and Architectural Changes in Australia
00:14:33
Speaker
Nations history and then just kind of this like block. I'm just like, yes, you're colonized now. Here's the architecture. And it's just like really basic average architecture. yeah And then not much else. Pretty, pretty boring.
00:14:52
Speaker
I forget about that because Australia is, you guys are younger than us, I think, but like you're still. It's the oldest like ongoing culture in the world, like the First Nations, the indigenous Australians, but then the like colonial Australia is from 1788 or something like that, I think. Okay. It's right at the same time. Yeah. Good old English. They did what they did and they were,
00:15:19
Speaker
They got everywhere. Yeah. that This looks empty. Indigenous people, hi. No, no, no. Empty. Not good. Go. Yeah. yeah And then people wonder why there's a couple of hundred years of systemic power imbalances at play. It's like, yes. Yeah. That'll happen. but That happens. As a side effect, still going in here. Yeah.
00:15:49
Speaker
Can Indigenous people there vote in the elections, or is it their own thing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, okay. Yeah, they sit ah they do. They hand and they do. But for a really, really long time, First Nations people were described as, they were just part of the flora and fauna of the land, not because obviously you needed a to say that it's okay, it's not one here. I'm just gonna you know i send all of our convicts over here. It'd be fine. So it's like, oh no, these are just the natives, just part of the flora and flora. It's like, oh, that's okay. It's like, yeah no. I think ours got the right to vote a hundred or so years ago. It wasn't, like like they could vote before women could, which is, I guess, progressive in its own way, but still not good. Yeah, I'm a really bad Australian. I have no idea. idea
00:16:40
Speaker
I only know that because Election Day is next week and I saw a post about it literally 20 minutes ago. You do. You do have election week next week. The whole world is watching with bait and breath. Yeah, we'll see what happens. We'll see which comes political up. This will be out probably after Election Day. Oh, amazing.
00:17:01
Speaker
Yeah. So maybe it won't even be uploaded. Who knows? We'll see. Depends on who gets the nuclear codes, right? Yeah. I want to go back to dogs in a second, but I was going to say, I was having a chat with someone who's from Brazil and she was saying, like, she doesn't understand why Native Americans here complained so much about you know, like rights and stuff that they don't have and because she's like, because in Brazil, natives are just technically fauna. I was like, that's so terrible. But yeah, when you put it into perspective that way. Yep. Yeah. But here, I mean, it's like obviously much more improvement is still needed. Yes, definitely. Here as well. Yeah.
Exploring Human-Dog Relationships in Ancient Greece
00:17:47
Speaker
OK, so your dissertation, though, was could you kind of summarize that and you can go as into as much detail as you want because it's really cool. And I think you sent it to me. I'll read it for the two hour interview.
00:17:59
Speaker
yeah I think I did. i'm not sure i'll have to send you I think I may have sent you a chapter some some time ago. And I think that might have been my chapter on War Dogs because it had a Rome Total War reference in there. okay I just like want all of my gamer friends to think that I'm cool so that I get the stuff.
00:18:19
Speaker
Oh, you sent me the thing saying that your school awarded you a doctorate. That's correct. Yes. OK. So thankfully you haven't had to read the actual doctorate. I will. OK, sick. we can I'll send it to you. So my PhD was called Ancient Poor Prince, and it's the functions and significance of human-dog relationships or interactions. Can't remember the exact title in Ancient Greece. so So long title, but basically I was looking at ah the history of specifically classical Athens and but looking at it through the lens of developments in and changes to interactions between Athenians and dogs. So because my hunch was that if you can find moments where dogs seem to have had some sort of
00:19:14
Speaker
one particular function, and then that function changes, there's got to be a historical motivator for that. And in doing those sorts of work, we can understand a bit more about the context of the time itself. So using, making sure that animals are seen as like legitimate historical actors, rather than just kind of passive subjects that history projects onto them. Seeing how they interact with people as having an impact on people's history as well. Because humans change their lives for the dogs around them. Humans are also adaptive creatures. So I remember when I was a kid, I had
00:19:54
Speaker
an Irish wolfhound cross old English sheep dog. So just giant dog. And that dog slept in my bed and we couldn't fit her anymore. So we had to get a bigger bed at an age where I probably didn't need a bigger bed anyway. But that was us adapting our environment for the dog in just the tiniest little way. But seeing lots of those little micro changes You can see that there is a you know a causation at play there, and helping to identify that is a big part of being like, hey, human-animal interactions are just as important for understanding and doing history as looking at coins, looking at
00:20:39
Speaker
written works, looking at bars painting, doing it all together. But through that animal perspective, it's just kind of a different way of doing history, much like, you know, it was seen to be wild that we would do women's history, you know, a hundred years ago. It's like, oh, well, you can't write a history from the perspective of people who have no voice in history. It's like, what about animals and things as well? Because there would literally be no human history without animals either.
00:21:10
Speaker
So, and that's just kind of, there's never been a purely, I can't remember who, I think it was someone, Susan Nance, there was a book in 2015 and the quote is like, animals are everywhere and there has never been a purely human moment in history. I think that's really cool to just be like,
00:21:30
Speaker
yet you don't, humans just don't exist in this world as their own, you know, in a vacuum, like they're the natural environment, the built environment, the animal world, they're all part of it. And you have to look at that. On that note, we'll be right back with these commercials. And then I have another question after that. And we're back with Dr. Elise Cannon. We're talking about human animal interactions in the ancient world. And I would agree with your last step before the, before the break that I mean, I don't think anyone could disagree that human, you know, we wouldn't have gotten to the Neolithic clearly without animals. We wouldn't have, quote, unquote, civilizations. We have it without animals. But even as hunter-gatherers, like, as a hunter-gatherer archaeologist, just how much tool utility you get from a deer, and I guess over there a kangaroo, like the bones, the hides, everything. Like, I assume they used kangaroo hides and stuff all the time.
00:22:28
Speaker
because, yeah, they're just giant rabbit deer, I guess. They're terrifying. I've had many a bushwalk interrupted by a kangaroo and I've been like, OK, this is how I die. Do they really just attack like that? No, but like I was doing one walk once and one just stared at me and I was like, OK, I guess we're just going to wait and see. And I was standing there for like 15, 20 minutes and it wasn't until another hiker was walking up towards me that the kangaroo finally bugged off. But at all wow that we were just looking at each other, and I was like, yeah, if I take a step, it's probably going to kick me. So yeah, this could be how it all ends. Do we have deer here that can do that, but it's more elk and definitely moose if you encounter them. Like, you do not want to make eye contact with the moose. It will charge you, and they're the size of an SUV or SUV.
00:23:27
Speaker
So yeah, but elk, like there's a page called Torons of Yellowstone, which is like morons, but Torons of people just like walking up, feeding the elk when there's blatant signs. That's like, do not do that. And they'll chase you down and stuff. And it's similar. That's just social Darwinism. That's fine. You know what? Go feed the elk. Don't read the sign. You just, you know what? We're overpopulated. Right. You do you get it for the grab.
00:23:56
Speaker
same page for for the gram had i think it was like a japanese tourist like cooking a boiled egg in the hot spring and or boiling an egg it's a very unique situation and it's like get get out like what are you doing stay in this spot yeah do you but yeah so human animal interaction like the just the amount of bones and like tools you can get from just a deer. But that's not even to say like that's hunting and using an animal's for its utility and its meat and its hides and stuff. But you can also, the plains natives here, like they followed the bison everywhere they went and their whole way of life and their migratory patterns are based off of bison. Part of my big lecture thing was that
00:24:42
Speaker
When humans got to Eurasia, they probably understood, like followed how wolves hunted to understand how to hunt new fauna and things like that, that they encountered. Cause wolves can do how to do it safely for thousands of years before humans got there and things like that. And then the Polynesians followed birds and things like that. I don't know. I'm really digressing, but how much of a role does that play in your research? Like with like Greece, like this human animal interaction. I know it's probably different because it's.
00:25:08
Speaker
and you much Yeah, it's a much later later period, but I think the the sentiment is still... My argument was that the relationships between humans and dogs in the classical Athenian period, so between 600 BC and 300 BC,
00:25:25
Speaker
they're so, so layered. So on the one hand, you do have the more like the functional relationships. So dogs working as guards and protectors of livestock, of people, sheep, dogs, that sort of thing to to hunting animals, companion animals. And then also people used to make leather from dog skin.
00:25:50
Speaker
So there's that element, that sort of like their body is having a physical ah physical use as well. um And then on the other side of that, with all of these functional relationships, they also have that symbolic value as well. And that symbolic value changes according to context. So in a guarding context, the functional need for a dog to be ferocious, aggressive, that having that instinct to protect knowing the parameters that they're in using their guarding instinctive behaviors. In that context, it's really good. But when you have a guard dog like the original mythological guard dog Cerberus, he's got those ferocious qualities, but he turns on people so that they can't leave the underworld.
00:26:39
Speaker
And then you also have, you know, politicians, like ancient politicians who call themselves like the guard dogs of the people who then comedians of the time will be like, yeah, but you know, you say you're a guard dog, but actually like you're colluding with the wolves like to steal our stuff. So.
00:27:00
Speaker
there's positives and there's negatives and there's ambivalences in that symbolic meaning that doesn't mean that that functional use changes. And so it's about how people adapt their relationships with dogs to fit all these different contexts and that the deep meaning within that is that dogs are just so intrinsic to human imagination that they there's no other way they could have imagined that situation than through the lens of the dogs that they were interacting with and knew about and had been singing about for hundreds of years and stuff as well. Yeah. I noticed looking through like biblical
00:27:44
Speaker
and like Qur'an or Quranic, it gives me the word. And then I just Abrahamic texts, we'll say that. And then like English European texts too. Like in the Torah, the Bible of Qur'an, there are dogs in it, but they're usually referred to very derogatorily because of just dogs were just uncleanly at the time. Or like they were diseased or somebody was called a dog, usually in like a cowardice context or like a sexual context.
00:28:11
Speaker
And then I looked at Shakespeare as well, which is way later, but no positive stories or anything to say about dogs. Really. It's usually using dog as a slur, like towards a person in some way. So kind of similarly, which I find.
00:28:28
Speaker
Interesting, because now we have like, you can say you dog if a guy is doing something, you know, sexually promiscuous, but you can also be like, what's up, dog in the most positive way. so it's Absolutely. And we have that with
Symbolism of Dogs in Ancient Greek Society
00:28:42
Speaker
them. We have that with the ancient Greek world as well. You know, in so in Homer's Eliad.
00:28:48
Speaker
dog is actually used quite a lot as a derogatory term especially in battle scenes where warriors are kind of fighting against one another and it's like I'm gonna leave your body for the dogs you know like I'm gonna kill you like the dog you are sort of thing so there is that really negative connotations but it's more towards female characters in these epics. that So they they call themselves dogs or they call each other, you know, like you shameless dog, you fearless dog. And it's there as like, There's a really great book called Shameless by a classicist named Christiana Franco, and it's about the intersection of dogs and women in ancient Greek thought. The underlying message being that, like dogs, women should know how to behave because they've been trained and conditioned in a certain way. Rough. that's when the dog phrase comes in. And within that term of calling someone a dog, there are so many different layers of like fear and anxiety around dogs eating bodies or
00:30:02
Speaker
you know So lots of weird relationship imbalances happening there that just go make this one term like so loaded. But then that's just in Homeric texts, in later, so in like classical texts. So there's really no mention of women as dogs.
00:30:22
Speaker
there's more metaphors or actual dogs involved in plays and things. so And there's more emphasis on guard dogs than just someone being like a shameless dog and stuff. So over time, like the meanings of these things do change. And I think that those changes are related to the context very, very closely. So like what's happening between Athenians and dogs during this period to mean that there is a decline in uses of dog-based insults and more emphasis on these other different types of metaphors because... Do you think it's correlated with like dot people having more
00:31:06
Speaker
like not social status, but like more wealth and the economy is better than dogs become like a pet or something and it's more positive for something or they're less utilitarian or something? Yeah, i'm that's kind of my hunch that because you know Athens during the classical period is just going through a lot of change. It's generally seen as you know this period of amazing growth and huge amounts of wealth are coming into the city.
00:31:34
Speaker
and shared wealth as well. They're moving a lot of their treasuries and things from different islands over into Athens. They're engaging in massive public building works. like people are People are doing better. The rich are getting richer. And people who are fighting in armies and stuff, they're getting paid a bit more as well. So everyone's kind of a bit more incentivized to you know love being Athenian and things like that. And within that,
00:32:03
Speaker
Athens doesn't seem to use dogs in military activities. There's like a few kind of references in there, but it's mainly Peloponnesian-based and um Ionian-based cities. So these are far away from Athens that have more stories about dogs being used in war, either as frontline like rushing into battle with horses and archers or being used as like messages, patrollers, that sort of thing. Whereas in Athens, it's just not really something that there's much evidence for.
00:32:39
Speaker
And my thinking. Is there a more naval based? Oh, sorry. he Yeah. Well, that's exactly it's kind of exactly like the first hunch that I had. But then during the classical period, like during the Peloponnesian Wars, there was still a lot of land battles happening between because Athens and Sparta were often meeting on in different lands and doing sieges and things. So there would have been uses for dogs, but we just don't hear about them. Right.
00:33:06
Speaker
So there's that kind of aspect of like, well, maybe there's just, it's just a different cultural conceptualization within the same like geographical region, but just, they are very different Hellenic cultures. They're not Greece as we know Greece today, right? So maybe in Athens they were just like, well, we don't use dogs in war. Like we use dogs for hunting, ah which they did.
00:33:31
Speaker
ah But then there's declining hunting happening during that period as well, because there's a lot more importing coming through from different areas. So the need for hunting for subsistence just doesn't really exist at this time.
00:33:45
Speaker
yeah And then there's, you know, people, there's definitely an increase in people owning companion dogs. So you see this like vase painting coming out from the about 500 BC onwards of these tiny fluffy little dogs that kind of look like Maltesers and spits. No shade to anyone, but like my most hated type of dogs. I can't stand Maltese. I find them really smelly.
00:34:14
Speaker
Anything smaller than a beagle is a cat. Yeah, like I grew up with wolf hounds, man. Like I'm not used to, what is this run, you know? And like they're very sweet and it's, you know, some people just adore them. It's the only breed their family has ever owned, but I just can't. So there's like this increase in these random little fluffy dogs that obviously aren't, they are nothing like the giant guard dogs that you see.
00:34:42
Speaker
on statues or written about, even though like anyone that owns a little dog knows that they can be pretty protective and good little guard dogs themselves, as long as you're not using size as a main deterrent. and Then they're being represented with kids on these little vases that kids would have been using in like special like festivals and things, like all these like different rites of passage. And it's during that period that the way that Athenian painters were representing children starts to change. So they'd started painting, they previously painted them just kind of as like miniature adults with six packs. So it was like quite confusing whether or not.
00:35:26
Speaker
they were small because they were lower in status or if they were small because they were babies. And so they start painting them kind of actually looking more baby-like with like rounder limbs and bigger heads and stuff like that. So you can kind of see, right? Yeah, that's ah that's a baby. yeah And at that time, that's when these dogs start getting represented more as well. and During that particular period, in the four thirty s like early to you know mid-420s, Athens had gone through two bouts of the plague. and so People were just dying left, right, and center, including a lot of children.
00:36:07
Speaker
And so these particular little vases that these kids were being painted on with these dogs, because they were used for a rite of passage when a male child would kind of become introduced as, you know, at three years old as part of the Athenian sort of brotherhood. If you have all these kids dying in the 10 years period before, it kind of makes sense that this new iconography would pop up showing the importance of children to a population that's been dwindling.
00:36:35
Speaker
And then when you start seeing these little dogs with them, it's like, what's a dog doing there? Like what's this little fluff ball? Like they're playing with the kids and stuff. There's literally nothing written about these types of dogs. so like not enough to determine who they are until much later. And so you kind of have to do this going back, ah going forward in time and using later sources to figure out what these dogs are. And so my case is that you can see this
00:37:07
Speaker
real change in a human dog relationship where these little dogs are coming into the household, they're playing with children, and had those plagues not happened, and had all of the, you know, the population survived, there wouldn't be this emphasis on childhood iconography from which we would have gotten these glimpses of these little dogs to then be like, whoa,
00:37:29
Speaker
What's this dog? So without that big historical causation, we wouldn't have had the um iconographic change to see that there was a new sort of relationship happening. And that's not to say that other dogs that were used as guards or hunters couldn't be companionly, but that a specific type of dog for a specific type of class imported from a totally different island over to Athens to play with children. like If you have a very class-based society like the Athenians did, if you're poor, like you're not feeding a dog leftovers from your table like the elites were. So these types of dogs, they're very closely associated with like luxury and the domestic and being indoors. Because if you're indoors, you're not out in the fields toiling. right So there's a lot happening that yeah without
00:38:26
Speaker
all of these pictures of babies and stuff, we just wouldn't really know when this dog started to become more popular with elites. Yeah. Sorry for the info dump. No, no, no. That's like, it's amazing. i' I'm bummed I have to like wrap it. But like, would you be down to come on again to talk about like what because I have so many questions of what's like an everyday dog's life back then like oh yeah I'd love to talk more about war like could you answer all that kind of stuff yeah definitely happy okay so I'll leave it to the audience if you want to write here in the comments on YouTube what questions you would have for Elise we can answer those and then if you're listening on Spotify or Apple just shoot me a message on Instagram but yeah I guess
00:39:12
Speaker
I'll wrap to do the the next episode with that. But are there any other closing thoughts you would have or like what's the but still most interesting thing you learned? We can end it on that. This is so like fascinating to me because I know nothing about this. I think the most interesting thing that I learned that it just like challenged so much for me was just It was in the process of reading and researching. I was coming across all of these kind of amazing stories about dogs from ancient Greece. and you know When you read things like like World History magazines or just generic stuff and it's like and dogs were you know from man's best friend to this. like They're all kind of generic titles and stuff.
00:40:02
Speaker
and But that's good because people want to read them. But you learn so much about how stories perpetuate without evidence. And I remember reading about all these awesome dogs in war from ancient Greece. And it's like, oh, wow, these stories are real cool. Like this dog is like crowned like the savior of the city. Like what is going on here? Like these Corinthians are wild. And then trying to find evidence for this and being like,
00:40:32
Speaker
Nope. Not one shred. And then having to be like, oh, sorry, I know that, you know, these stories are perpetuating, but they they're not real or they might be based on XYZ, but fanciful at best. And that really challenged a lot of what I wanted to get. I wanted these dogs to be real so badly. And so kind of having that deflated, but then being like, but there is actually these other stories that are just as cool. They might not be as you know, amazing and the dog is the hero, but there's so much other like tiny bits of evidence that you can kind of weave together to make a narrative, like a historical narrative for dogs as well. And that's just as cool as there being these incredible dogs that had statues made of them or whatever. Yeah, that's so cool. So kind of like, you know, ancient myths, but like with dogs or like folklore that of dogs in those cities that just
00:41:31
Speaker
There's no rooted evidence for it. It's just stories. Exactly. And I think it says a lot about... what we want, what people want to believe about dogs as well, that we have you know these... We've got it you know in... Some of the stuff I covered in history doggos was you know the amazing dogs in war, like Sergeant Stubby. And we have these stories for them, but that also that tells us a lot about ourselves and what we want from these dogs, more so than what it says about what the dogs are actually doing.
00:42:02
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So there's a lot to be said for anthropomorphism and projecting our ideas onto the animals around us. But that's not always a bad thing for a historian like me. That means we get to learn a lot about the society by looking at how they, what they imbue into their animals as well.
00:42:19
Speaker
Yeah. And I would say dogs probably get the most of that of any animal. I might be biased because that's what I read about, but I mean, that seems to be the case. Yeah. I had one of my, one of my examiners for my PhD was like, do you really think that the dog was the best example here though? It could also have been a horse. And I was like, no dog.
00:42:40
Speaker
I'll go down fighting over this them fighting words. Yeah, horse, horse versus dog, which one was more beneficial to humans is always a, it stirs the pot on my Instagram when I asked that question. yeah A potty coming out of that. Yeah, absolutely. But yeah, at least I have to wrap, but if let's let this episode come out, if America exists next week and get some questions and comments, and then I'd love to have you on. Cause I know someone asked me specifically about Molossian hounds.
00:43:09
Speaker
And I saw so many statues of those, and then war dogs in the classical
Future Podcast Topics
00:43:14
Speaker
era. But I would also just like to know about dogs, like what their life was like in ancient Greece and stuff. Yeah, too easy. I mean, I've got a chapter on guard dogs, got a chapter on war dogs, got a sub-chapter on molasses dogs, so we can do it. Yeah, let's do that. And if people have other questions, like just send them. I'm happy to, I need to be more active with history doggos.
00:43:38
Speaker
What if I could do to help too? If you want to do like a joint post or something, like yeah let's get back up. Yeah. Awesome. Well guys, please rate and review the podcast on Apple and Spotify. Leave a comment and subscribe here on YouTube. And Elise, where can people find you? And then we just mentioned it. Can find me on Instagram at history doggos.
00:43:59
Speaker
And that's just one word. Just one word. That's the only platform I have because I'm really bad at technology. Fair enough. I wish I were. It would be a lot less stressful anyway. It's always good to chat with you and I'm happy to have you back on in a couple of weeks. Absolutely. Happy. All right. Thank you. Thank you.
00:44:21
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his ah RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Cultural Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Rachel Rodin. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.