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Puppy Problems - Episode 9
43 Plays11 years ago
Welcome to Episode 9 of The Struggling Archaeologist’s Guide to Getting Dirty: Puppy Problems!
Now first off, I’d like to apologize for the content of this episode. There’s no way around it… I’m talking about dead puppies here. I mean they’re mummified puppies which is what makes it interesting, but, yeah- still pretty sad. But since I’m a dog lover and an exasperated dog owner, I turned this one into a discussion on the history of dog/human evolution because that’s pretty cool and stuff.
If you listen to the episode you’ll notice I talk a lot about stray dogs that stalk me and try to sneak into my house, like I won’t notice I have this strange dog hanging around. Like since there’s so many in there I would, like a crazy cat lady, probably not even notice. I wasn’t lying, and you can see the evidence on the original blog post for the episode here...
Alright, well that’s it for the puppy talk. In this week’s Shorty News we talk about this jerk from Canada who sparks another convo on relic hunting and the black market. And that’s it folks, make sure to listen to previous episodes here or on iTunes, and check out our new tumblr blog here!
McNiven OUT!
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Transcript
00:00:03
Speaker
Yeah.
Welcome and Life Updates
00:00:23
Speaker
Wow, I cannot believe it, but we are at episode 9. Hello listeners, this is Jenny, host of the Struggling Archaeologist's Guide to Getting Dirty. Welcome back to the podcast for a very exciting episode today. Sorry, I, you know, I would love to get these podcasts out more often. I know they're about three or four weeks between right now. Um, I just have crazy stuff going on. You know,
00:00:51
Speaker
My life is complicated. I'm moving into a new house right now. I got all types of stuff going on. I'm trying to write a master's thesis and I'm tutoring and blah. Here's just all types of crap. And I've got a stray puppy problem going on.
00:01:12
Speaker
Not, I don't have a puppy problem. I love dogs. I love them so much that I have three of them. Uh, two of them are rescues and one is a pointer. Uh, who, yeah, she's, she was from a breeder in Tennessee and she was quite expensive. Uh, and she knows it, you know, uh, she has that air about her, but, uh, that's the type of a dog that my husband wanted. So that's what we got. And I said, the next one we're getting is a rescue.
00:01:42
Speaker
So we got a mutt from the local shelter and my husband loved the mutt more than he likes the pointer. So he said, oh, we'll go back and get another one. And which I was like, uh, yeah, three dogs is a lot, but okay, because they're, you know, suffering and they need homes and loving families and all that. And so we got our third one. And now I have this problem you see ever since then. I was like two years ago. Uh,
00:02:08
Speaker
Because apparently I am such a wonderful and loving dog mother, stray dogs just seem to find me wherever I am. They come out of little holes and fences and random, I don't know, alleyways and come up to me.
00:02:27
Speaker
and beg me to take them home and and love them and squeeze them and be their puppy mom so yeah i have a stray at my house right now he's super awesome his name's roger but he's kind of driving me nuts because he's not been fixed yet
00:02:45
Speaker
And he keeps trying to have some fun times with my lady dogs. And I'm not having it, you know? So I think I've spent probably half of my day today trying to chase Roger off of my girls. And because I am a responsible pet owner, I am having him neutered next week. So folks out there, be responsible pet owners and get your dogs fed or neutered to control the pet population.
00:03:15
Speaker
And if anyone there wants a dog, Roger is a really sweet guy whom I am trying to find a home for. So if you'd like to come to New Mexico and pick him up, then just send me an email and get back to me because this guy just, I love him, but he's just got to go. He's driving me nuts.
00:03:37
Speaker
that's funny because he's getting neutered yeah you get this it's a it's a bald joke so okay well
Dogs in History
00:03:50
Speaker
Speaking of dogs, our today's episode is, you know, I had this, I actually was inspired by my husband's suggestion the other day that I do an episode about the evolution of dogs and their relationship to humans because we are such loving dog owners. He thought that would be really interesting to talk about. And I was like, oh, hey, I like that. I'm gonna do it. So that's what today's episode is mainly about.
00:04:20
Speaker
A few things before we start. Everybody, thanks for listening to my last episode about Civil War archaeology. It was really fun to do. I'd love to hear more about your Civil War connections. I've had a couple people send me some great information and I can't wait to hear from more of you. And I'll do a little follow-up episode maybe sometime.
00:04:41
Speaker
Also, I just recently started a Tumblr page for the podcast, so it's gonna be more of a more functional blog, I guess you could say, than the website. So I'll be updating it daily, or almost daily, pretty regularly, with news stories, little tidbits here and there, and I'll be sharing other stuff happening in the news that I think is interesting.
00:05:08
Speaker
and maybe some stuff for my personal life. It's guidetogettingdirty.tumblr.com. So make sure you check it out and follow me because it's going to be a super fun time. And with that, I think let's move into the episode.
Podcast News and Egyptian Dog Mummies
00:05:24
Speaker
I'm going a little bit back towards more of the traditional format today, so you know what's coming up first.
00:05:30
Speaker
It's our first news story from the news and goings on from around the spheroid segment. You guys remember that one from way back in the day? I hope you didn't forget the jingle just in case you did. I'm gonna sing it. Ready? And it's news and goings on from around the spheroid. Ta-da! And today
00:05:56
Speaker
Actually, our puppy's story for today is inspired by this news piece that just came out in Live Science. It's from an article titled, Egyptian dog mummy, infested with blood sucking parasites. And, you know, I saw this title in the news headlines and I was like, oh, wow, that sounds like a really fun,
00:06:22
Speaker
joy-filled story to talk about. Why don't I check it out?
00:06:27
Speaker
And I did just because I love anything connected to dogs, but this is pretty sad Okay, so the article is written by Jeremy Su I think is how you pronounce it a life science contributor and it's Okay. So yeah, you guys know I love Egypt already because I did a episode a couple back about Egypt So this is like a combination of my favorite things. It's ancient Egypt and it's dogs So the story is about
00:06:56
Speaker
a team of excavators in Egypt from the University of Strasbourg, France, in association with the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. A team includes Jean Bernard Huchet, Francois Dunand, and Roger Lichtenberg. And they recently discovered and have been studying a mass grave
00:07:21
Speaker
full of hundreds of mummified dogs found at the site of El Deir in Egypt that they discovered and have been working on since 2010. And this tomb, the
00:07:36
Speaker
Tomb of the Lost Puppies is actually one of many surrounding a Roman fortress or a classical era fortress at Eldir in Egypt and it was basically occupied from the 4th century BC to the 4th century AD.
00:07:54
Speaker
which is a period we've talked about before on the show, I think in one of our first episodes when we discovered the mummy's hairstyle. And that's a good one, so check it out. So, okay, so this is about a cache of puppy mummies. Now, what you ask could be more depressing than finding an entire tomb full of dead dogs.
00:08:24
Speaker
Hmm, there is something. So there's this one particular puppy. And the mummy's in fairly good shape. And unfortunately, they discovered that this poor puppy was infested with 61 preserved brown dog ticks.
00:08:43
Speaker
Most of them were located on its left ear with others on its coat. And it also had a blood-sucking louse fly attached to it as well. And obviously they think it's likely that a tick-borne disease that was transferred to the dog from these many unwelcome guests led to its untimely death. Because it's not a full-grown dog, it's just a youngin.
00:09:06
Speaker
And as sad as this is, it's kind of an important find because even though we have some information from ancient documentation about parasites and parasitic diseases in these ancient populations, we don't really have any archaeological evidence of this.
00:09:24
Speaker
There's I think maybe one instance where we have preserved ticks in fossilized coprolites, that's poop, which was found at a site in Arizona, but they're not actually attached to a person. Unfortunately, this person maybe ate them.
00:09:44
Speaker
which that's no that doesn't sound enjoyable but whatever so yeah so we've got a lot of we've got pictures we've got writing
00:09:56
Speaker
that mentions these type of things. Actually, surprisingly, some of our most famous classical authors like Homer, Aristotle, Pliny the Elder, they've actually mentioned dog ticks, oddly enough. And there's a depiction of a dog or something like a dog, like a hyena, that has ticks on it, on a wall in a 15th century Egyptian tomb, 15th century BC.
00:10:24
Speaker
And so, yeah, so we know that they existed and we knew that they were a common pest for human beings and their beloved animals.
00:10:34
Speaker
But we never really, we don't have a lot of physical evidence of them. So that's why this find is kind of important. And because it's in Egypt and the tomb obviously is very dry arid and I'm not sure it didn't say whether the dog had been mummified traditionally and wrapped or whether it was more of a natural mummification.
00:10:55
Speaker
But it's good that it was mummified because all of these ticks are basically perfect preserved. They're perfectly preserved. So that's something kind of cool, I guess.
00:11:09
Speaker
If you're an etymologist, maybe it's cool. So more about these ticks. These type of insects were probably a big problem at the site of Eldir because the remains of over 400 dogs have been recovered from there. And so obviously they're looking through this population for other signs of parasites.
00:11:32
Speaker
And the reason why there were so many dogs in this one site was because the temple was probably associated with one of the jackal-headed Egyptian gods and the two most likely were Anubis and Wep Wep Wep, which you cannot say three times fast. I don't care how good you are. It's the statue of Anubis. I'll give like $2 to anyone who can tell me where that quote is from.
00:12:02
Speaker
Anyway, that's just some one random thing from a movie that that totally random points throughout my life people will just say Like my husband will just say that randomly sometimes and I don't know why it's funny, but it is it just is
00:12:16
Speaker
So anyway, so at the temple, they worshiped the jackal-headed god, whether it was Anubis or Wep Wep Wep Wep Wep Wep Wep. That is just impossible to say. Wep Wep. And so there are a large number of mummified dogs here, most likely because they were sacrifices.
00:12:44
Speaker
You see, Egyptian gods were often thought to be the patron deities of specific locations. They were associated with different locales around Egypt. So you kind of had your homeboy god, you know, in your hood. And that's kind of the main god you guys would like, you know, sacrifice stuff to and stuff.
00:13:06
Speaker
So these type of patterns will lead to specific types of offerings and sacrifices designed specifically for that god.
00:13:19
Speaker
And actually, the mass mummification of animal offerings is really not uncommon in Egypt. You do find them pretty, they're fairly common. These animals that are associated with specific gods are thought to be like living incarnation of that deity's essence. And so they were revered, but they were also sacrificed to that deity.
00:13:42
Speaker
And I know there's specific places where we find caches of different animals. There's cats, dogs, this lovely bird that looks kind of like a crane called the ibis, and bulls, the serapic bulls. They've all been sort of farmed in these locations and kept and used for these ceremonies at temples.
00:14:06
Speaker
dedicated to their doppelganger deities. I came up with that phrase. Smart, right? Animal mummies are fairly common in Egypt. They're not all temple offerings. They're also found in personal tombs. Egyptians would bury their animals with them for use in the afterlife as pets.
00:14:31
Speaker
Probably maybe food in some cases. As sad as that is. But yeah, it's pretty common. So that's, yeah, that's animal mummies. Pretty fascinating, right? So anyway, back to the specific study. The French team is hoping to learn more, not only about the relationship between Egyptians and their animals symbolically,
00:14:56
Speaker
but of the evolution of diseases that are spread due to the physical relationships between humans and animals.
Co-evolution of Humans and Dogs
00:15:06
Speaker
And if you want to read more about the team's findings in greater detail, they just put out an article this summer in the August issue of the International Journal of Paleopathology about their findings that I would definitely check out. So yes, poor, poor puppy. So going on from this,
00:15:33
Speaker
Let's talk a little bit about the human-dog relationship. Now obviously we know and what the study is intimating is that there are parasitic and other diseases that can be spread from dog to human and it's important to study how those diseases evolve and through the relationship. But there's a larger question at hand here which is,
00:16:03
Speaker
What's the deal with human dog evolution? He's man's best friend? When did he become man's best friend? How long has this been going on? And, you know, that stuff. So, yeah, we're gonna talk about that for a minute. So, okay, dogs.
00:16:23
Speaker
If you think about it, man has pretty much always assumed that dogs, the docile and loving cousins of predatory wolves, were pretty much created by man to serve his own purpose. And the wolf as a wild species, at some point in history, must have interacted with our ancestors and were eventually tamed and then used as protectors, hunting companions, and friends. Best friends, in fact.
00:16:52
Speaker
But, uh, is the assumption really true? Did humans tame wolves and breed the wilderness out of them to create the lovable Marlies of our world? Um, well, yes. And kind of no. And kind of yes.
00:17:09
Speaker
There's a theory that the canine hominid relationship evolved as both of our species evolved and that it wasn't just a one-way ticket. Each influenced the other and some people believe that this happened by a process called coevolution. So coevolution
00:17:31
Speaker
is pretty common. There's a lot of different species that co-evolve. Certain birds and insects change morphologically as the flowers they feed from change. It's kind of like if the stressors cause one form of
00:17:48
Speaker
the species to be more successful on a certain type of flower then they'll both kind of evolve in that general direction and then they'll sort of fine-tune to each other and Sort of it's like a back-and-forth kind of relationship where they both become more finely evolved in order to Make the most benefit from each other. So it's not so much a causal relationship as a back-and-forth and the difference in this relationship is that
00:18:18
Speaker
in the case I'm talking about is that well for dogs and their wolf ancestors the change between them before and after was both physical and behavioral. Hominids are humans and are human ancestors and cousins were probably not really physically changed as much by their interaction with wolves and dogs as they were culturally and behaviorally. So it's not exactly
00:18:44
Speaker
equal, we changed in different ways, but we both definitely changed. So how did this happen? There's actually a lot of research out there on dog evolution, if you want to look for it. There's a lot of different, there's books, web pages, academic journals, you know, there's tons of stuff on it out there. And there's also disagreement on when and how the process actually started. There's different ideas, but there's kind of a general consensus on some things.
00:19:14
Speaker
But, at some point long ago in our history, or perhaps Neanderthal history, hominids began to live in the same general locations as packs of wild wolves.
00:19:29
Speaker
And the proximity not only made them interact as competitors for resources, but potential predators of each other. So you see there's complicated relationships here, okay? So hunter-gatherers who would have been the
00:19:51
Speaker
hominids or humans or Neanderthals or whoever that they were interacting with at this time were pretty much living in very small social groups similar to the wolf who lives in a pack
00:20:02
Speaker
The differences were the hominids weren't as proficient at certain aspects of pack life as the wolves were. Wolves are actually really dedicated team members and their bond as what really makes them successful at the things they do best. Rearing young together, scavenging, hunting, by herding and tracking prey. These type of things were something that humans and Neanderthals and all that
00:20:29
Speaker
you know, had the gist of maybe weren't all the way there yet. And wolves really did it better. So these are some of the things that we think they actually learned from wolf packs by observing and interacting with them. And of course, the wolf's pretty much been treated for a long time, like just some simple animal that humans chose to domesticate because we saw them
00:20:56
Speaker
And we're like, hey, they can help us and we'll benefit from them, so let's own them. So that's not really realistic. In reality, the wolf was probably partly an inspiration to our ancestors in the natural wolf form.
00:21:14
Speaker
And from its patterns and interactions with the hominids, our people were changed as well. So we didn't just take them and change them, we learned from them. And that's...
00:21:28
Speaker
one of the cool things about coevolution. I saw a great paper on this by the aptly named Wolfgang Schleit and Michael Schalter from Evolution and Cognition Journal called the Coevolution of Humans and Canids.
00:21:49
Speaker
And it kind of speaks about this portion of our co-development. So first, according to them, we kind of have to consider the origins of the two groups in order to understand how they might have come to this meeting, like what points they were both kind of at.
00:22:05
Speaker
Of course, human evolution was the result of millions of years of primate development. And primates, even though they're intelligent and capable of social behavior, are also very opportunistic and individualistic at heart. So they do have some really different traits from the completely pack-minded wolf.
00:22:29
Speaker
So, but whatever, I mean those primate traits of intelligence and dexterity and all these things that the wolves lack, that's what they made up for in cooperative and group-oriented action and mindsets. And the Paxovals that hominids observed in Ice Age Europe and Asia probably demonstrated to them what type of social system could lead for them to success in such a harsh climate and landscape in that era and everything.
00:22:58
Speaker
Because, you know, they were living in smoggers, but they weren't flourishing. Because I think their social behaviors weren't really developed to the point where they truly had a functioning social unit that always worked toward the betterment of the group and the success of those individuals. Which is something that the wolf packs had been
00:23:27
Speaker
evolving for millions of years on their own, or at least their canine ancestors had been, and they benefited from the results of that. During this period, the most successful wolf species was the gray wolf, and it basically was roaming the northern hemisphere at the same time and places as Neanderthals.
00:23:50
Speaker
Of course, it's not like when you talk about human-dog relationships, people pretty much just assume that dogs were or wolves were domesticated by modern Homo sapiens within the last, you know, 30,000 years or something like that.
00:24:06
Speaker
And there is a lot of evidence of that relationship, but there is also evidence that indicates it really might have gone back as far as the Neanderthals who might have actually really led the way in forging this relationship. And part of that evidence comes from the DNA.
00:24:28
Speaker
study and research of the modern dog as compared to the gray wolf. And DNA research has basically been able to reconstruct the molecular clock, as they call it, which gives us our best guess as to when dogs and wolves began to split, kind of by measuring the differences in the DNA. The longer your DNA has been separated, the more chances there are of it being changed or modified.
00:24:57
Speaker
by mutations and such and so you see those changes over time grow and follow certain patterns and so you can trace that back basically from the modern dog back in time through fossils and DNA from those to the wolf and to the modern wolf.
00:25:16
Speaker
The best theory based on DNA right now actually places the point of divergence of the two groups to around 135,000 years before present, BP as they call it, which is pretty close to years ago, but not quite.
00:25:37
Speaker
There is this study that actually places the date back even further to like one million years ago, but the more commonly accepted date is that the split happened somewhere between 100 and 135,000 years ago. So the authors of that article, I was talking about Schleit and Schalter, believe that this point is when wolves and Neanderthals were starting to interact
00:26:02
Speaker
and were vying for resources in Central and Eastern Europe. And the wolf in this climate became really adept at herding reindeer and other mid-sized game. And the Neanderthal started going after bigger prey and became more capable of big game hunting and slaughter. So the mammoth and all of that.
00:26:31
Speaker
So there are specialty areas where it's sort of beneficial to each, because the Neanderthal could learn from the wolf about herding and selection of pack animals, like the reindeer. And the wolf could scavenge from Neanderthal camps and killing grounds for extra meat, bones, and all of those resources, because a mammoth is freaking huge, right? Like enormous.
00:26:57
Speaker
So if you're just a bunch of Neanderthals and there's like five of you who just took down this mammoth, it's really hard to make sure you get every single scrap of that mammoth after you've, you know, slaughtered and skinned it and treated, you know, done all that. Basically, you're gonna leave a humongous bloody mess behind wherever you take that mammoth meat and bone and skin to, you know. So that's something that wolves benefited from for sure.
00:27:25
Speaker
So yeah, it was beneficial for everyone. But you know, they also, you know, I'm sure occasionally killed each other. So maybe not that beneficial. But anyway, the popular theory that comes from this type of back and forth is that eventually some wolves learned that living near hominids was beneficial to them because
00:27:50
Speaker
hey look there's this humongous bloody mess of meat pulp on the ground i can eat uh and then if hey if i keep following those people or
00:28:01
Speaker
whatever with the mammoth meat, they lead me to their camp and they have a refuse pit there that I can eat out of. And so they sort of turn from their scavenging ways in the wild to scavenging from the refuse of the Neanderthal.
00:28:22
Speaker
And so because of this, they became more comfortable being close to each other, both the Neanderthal and the wolf. And eventually it's, I'm sure situations like this happen, wolves that were more comfortable being close to the, and this has probably happened other parts of the world at later times with Homo sapiens or maybe even Homo erectus in Asia, but wolves would die and leave their pups
00:28:50
Speaker
closer to the camp and some of those motherless pups were actually taken in and the Neanderthals or whoever probably actually recognized when they took these pups in that the younger they were, the more amenable they were to living with the group and they were actually pretty cool. They could be used for warmth if they were starving, obviously they could unfortunately eat them and take their hides
00:29:19
Speaker
But then, you know, if they were really comfortable as they got older, they could be used as hunting companions. They could also be played with and cuddled. And so the children of the wolves who stayed with
00:29:35
Speaker
Neanderthals or humans, whoever, were actually bred with each other because those were the ones that they had formed relationships with. And because they were bred together, their offspring were also more docile and compatible to humans than all of the crazy wild wolves who were still hanging out in the woods, eating some reindeer, having Rudolph for dinner, you know?
00:30:01
Speaker
So eventually there were kind of two distinct groups. There were the crazy feral wolves and the domesticates.
00:30:11
Speaker
So, and then they kept breeding them, Neanderthals and later humans. The physical traits of these wolves would begin to change over time according to what was more agreeable to us. And those with the most adorable and non-threatening traits were preferred. So those were the ones we bred more often. I'm sure if there were problem pups that were still on the wild side, they might be turned out and not bred.
00:30:40
Speaker
And so by that process over hundreds and thousands of years everything changed and we ended up with best friends. And then Jennifer Aniston tricked us into going to see a movie about an adorable but rascally puppy who later breaks all of our hearts and makes us hate her for all eternity. Thanks for nothing Jennifer Aniston.
00:31:05
Speaker
All right, well, of course, um, there's so much you can go into Aside from Marley and me Which you're lucky I haven't talked about for like the last 20 minutes. So I should mention the archaeological side of this That whole Neanderthal wolf theory is pretty much a theory based on the DNA evidence and the physical evidence that places wolves and
00:31:36
Speaker
Neanderthals and archaic homo sapiens and all of these groups together in the same areas at the same times.
00:31:46
Speaker
some fossil evidence that actually places them in the same context. But the really hard archaeological evidence of human canine companionship does not really go that far back. Well, I mean it's far, but it's not like crazy far. The definite evidence pretty much goes back about 14,000 years ago. That's when we start to see co-barials of humans and dogs.
00:32:10
Speaker
which is even a lot older still than the evidence for relationships with any other domesticated animals. That happens way later. So we know like basically for a fact that dogs were the first animals that humans domesticated. And that we fell in love with enough to the point where we buried ourselves with them. You don't often see like human cow burials or human goat burials. Well, in certain parts of the world maybe.
00:32:37
Speaker
Anyway, so we have that starting around 14,000 years ago is when we see the really strong bond. But there's also fossil evidence where wolves and humans were kind of hanging out in the same place, kind of in the same context, maybe the same cave, as early as 100,000 years ago. And then we get some kind of a lot better evidence, starting around 30,000 years ago, of like,
00:33:04
Speaker
human cultural groups at, you know, this site and then there's like a dog with them that's buried on the side, you know? And a lot of that is, it spans, it's common from Central and Eastern Europe to the Middle East, all the way over to Siberia. There's actually a dog skeleton in the Czech Republic from like 26, 27,000 years ago that was buried with a mammoth bone in its mouth. It's like every doggy's dream.
00:33:32
Speaker
Either he died the happiest dog in the world, or it was put there by his humans after he died to make all the other dogs in the afterlife jealous.
00:33:43
Speaker
So you ask, how can we tell the difference between the wolf and the dog during this sort of transitional period? And as the dog is domesticated, there are morphological differences that can be seen in both fossil evidence and the DNA. So physically, they did get smaller. Obviously, most dogs are not as big as full-size wolves.
00:34:08
Speaker
Their coats changed which we can see in some instances if there's some sort of mummification. The jaw shortens and the teeth are shrinking. There's a reduction in brain size and also a drop in the shape of the forehead.
00:34:25
Speaker
And we also know there's a really great experiment that's been going on in Russia for the last 40 years to study the domestication of foxes. And I know they were on the cover of National Geographic and I don't know when it was like a year or two ago, something like that. But there was an awesome article that I remember reading in there about it.
00:34:45
Speaker
But anyway, so they kind of, through this study, have chosen certain foxes to breed for domestication and then other foxes that they don't breed for domestication for comparison. And the foxes that have become more compatible with humans, which is
00:35:07
Speaker
Basically the same process that we assume wolves would have gone through start to look Physically different in like their the behavior and soft tissue and all that so they start to Retain their puppy like good looks longer, you know, they reach sexual maturity faster But they keep their floppy ears and their short faces and their curly tails because they're so cute
00:35:33
Speaker
They're so much cuter. It makes you want to take care of them. It's the same thing with babies. The cuter a little baby of any species is, the more you're going to want to take care of it, hence the better chance it has at survival.
00:35:50
Speaker
That's part of it. Also, certain behaviors, they don't develop their sense of fear as quick, which makes it more possible for them to connect with humans in their really young years. They still whimper and wag their tails as kind of forms of communication with humans, and they really do seem to seek out the attention of humans, which is completely different from the feral foxes that they have not bred for these traits.
00:36:19
Speaker
So if it's possible to breed foxes for only 30 generations, solely selecting for their friendliness to humans, that's the only thing they looked for when they chose to breed these foxes together, then to get all of these other traits to follow just from that one trait, creating foxes that are actually so dog-like, they can be taken into your home and owned as a pet. I'm not lying, people own foxes as pets now because of this.
00:36:48
Speaker
So, if that's possible, then it is really not hard to believe that all over the northern hemisphere, over the last 135,000 years, when groups of hominids encountered packs of wild wolves and began interacting with them, that once a bridge of contact was gapped, a more compatible species of dog would follow, as long as the relationship was fostered by both groups.
00:37:14
Speaker
Remember, not only did we benefit from having wolves and dogs among us, but we provided them with a new pack and a consistent source of food and support. As has been suggested, they have probably just been playing us all along. And you know, when I crawl into the 10 inch corner of my bed, not occupied by dogs at the end of the day, I totally get what they're saying. So yeah, basically dogs are awesome.
00:37:45
Speaker
and they're that way because a long time ago we decided to live together and be friends. So that's about it for Dog Evolution right now. There's a lot more I could go on and on but I've been putting out like hour-long episodes lately and I'm pretty sure you guys probably don't want to like listen to me talk for an hour because
00:38:08
Speaker
It's not quite as exciting as those other podcasts where there's like four or five people just joking around and having a really great time. I'm just here by myself and it probably sounds depressing. So hopefully not that depressing. I hope you're having a good time.
00:38:25
Speaker
I'm sure you'll be having a good time when we get to our next segment, Shorty News. Yeah. Remember Shorty News? It's back. This week's Shorty News is actually connected to last time's episode. I didn't say that right, but the last episode.
00:38:48
Speaker
Wow, yeah, I went on for a long time, like maybe a bit too long last time, about the process of relic hunting and all of this stuff, which is not pleasant in the archaeological community to deal with.
00:39:09
Speaker
I found this new story this week about, it was from the Global News, Canadian Global News actually, author is Maya Assoud, and she's writing about this man from Halifax, Nova Scotia, who has been sentenced to 9 years in jail for artifact theft.
Artifact Theft and Ethics
00:39:32
Speaker
Now, folks, this is what I was warning you about. Stealing these type of things are not good, and you can end up in jail. So, yeah. This guy's name is John Mark Tillman, and apparently he's been collecting stolen artifacts from museums, archives, and galleries for years and hiding them in his house.
00:39:54
Speaker
And when he was discovered, they raided his house and found 1600 or more antiques and artifacts.
00:40:05
Speaker
And they were removed, thankfully. He was actually discovered on a routine traffic stop to have had crap in his car, I guess, or something like that, which led them to him because he did have a criminal history of antique theft, which was like a little bit of a red flag there.
00:40:24
Speaker
His motivations were not because he really really really loved having a 700 year old armor suit in his living room, but greed. Like a lot of relic hunters motivation is. And he was involved in the black market, which is something I didn't really
00:40:44
Speaker
Talk about last time, but you know we can chat about it for a sec anyway The man has been arrested. He's going to jail for nine years He's also handed over his home and bank account in payment for his crimes, so you've been a very bad boy Mr.. Tillman, and you will have a very long time to think about it, so Don't do it again
00:41:06
Speaker
Anyway, you know what's interesting? I had a conversation with an anthropologist after I put out the last episode who is an avid coin collector. Like, not regular coins, like ancient coins. He has coins from ancient Egypt, ancient Rome. He does just tons and tons of them.
00:41:27
Speaker
He has a dealer that he works with where he has an antique store and he gets coins from him there and all this stuff. I know I went on about relic hunting and its woes and all of that, but it was interesting to hear his perspective on it because things like coins are very active in the markets, antique markets and black markets.
00:41:53
Speaker
What you don't think about is, yeah, you know, it's terrible to think of someone going to an archaeological site and pilfering, you know, just kind of digging up blindly without doing it the correct way, archaeologically, and just stealing this stuff and there's no record of it and then it's just gone and no one can study it from that point on. It just becomes kind of a lost piece of history that can never benefit anyone except some selfish person who owns it.
00:42:18
Speaker
But there are situations where I think it's probably more acceptable to make artifacts and antiques available to the public for purchase. And coin caches are one of those, you know, in my opinion, I guess at this point. Because he's pointed out there's a lot of places in the old world where
00:42:42
Speaker
During regular archaeological digs they'll find caches which is like a place where you basically throw like instead of just putting one coin in the ground you dig a hole and you bury 2,000 so like there's a cache full of a whole bunch of stuff be it jewelry coins
00:43:02
Speaker
I don't know, sculptures, whatever. And they may discover it the right way archeologically and it may be cataloged and studied and documented and all of that. But what do they do with them afterwards? You've got 2,000 coins that are exactly the same that come from this awesome archeological site. But once it's been documented and studied, how many of those coins
00:43:28
Speaker
or artifacts in general are going to be of use to the public or made available to the public. They're not always displayed in museums. Even if you have 2,000 of the same coin from, I don't know, from 68 BC Rome or whatever, how many do you really need to put in the window of a museum? If the research is finished on them or
00:43:56
Speaker
Well, research is never really finished. See, that's the tough part, is because you may study something, but what if 20 years down the road someone else wants to come along and look at the same artifacts for their research? That's the tricky thing, is that a lot of this stuff, yes, I've seen it. It literally ends up in a box on a shelf in a storage unit.
00:44:17
Speaker
And as sad as it is to think that that's where all of these artifacts and history is after they're done being excavated and studied in a lab, like...
00:44:30
Speaker
Is it really better for them to end up being sold to people? You know, that's my issue. I just don't know. I don't know. In the case of the coins, if you've got 2,000 of them and you've got 10 of them on display at a museum and any other museum that wants to display them has whatever they want, what do you have left?
00:44:52
Speaker
1800, what are you gonna do with them? If they're gonna sit in a shelf, in a box, and gather dust, then is it maybe better to make them available legally to collectors who truly appreciate having that piece of history in their house?
00:45:11
Speaker
that is the question so i don't know i'm still on the fence about it because if you make an exception for coins then what's to stop you from making an exception for unique pieces of jewelry or sculptures or whatever so well you know like
00:45:28
Speaker
I don't know, I'm sure there's people who would be over the moon to have a pottery shard from ancient Egypt in their house because they really love history and that portion of history, like me. And I know for a fact that every excavation in Egypt you end up with 20 boxes, 30 boxes full of pottery shards that probably aren't very distinctive and aren't flashy and aren't covered with gold but are still there.
00:45:55
Speaker
And once you've studied them, they're going to be sitting in a box in a storage place. So maybe it is better to let some of the stuff like that, once you've documented it and done it the right way, go to history lovers. I don't know. Anyway, that's my little two bit on that. So if you have an opinion, I'd like to hear it. Send me an email at guide to getting dirty at gmail.com.
Conclusion and Social Media
00:46:24
Speaker
And that's probably gonna do it for today folks. I can't really think of anything else. I went through our news segments and our discussion and it is 1210 in the morning and I would really like to go watch some vampire diaries. So please don't judge me. I'm just a girl.
00:46:51
Speaker
Just a girl who likes vampires, so No hate mail, please Anyway, I'm gonna go I'm gonna watch that silly show about vampires. I'm gonna cuddle my four freaking puppies and I'll be back to you guys hopefully in two weeks it depends on how quickly I can move all of my crap into another house and
00:47:18
Speaker
and then we'll be back here any suggestions for future episodes make sure to send me a message on the facebook page guide to getting dirty on facebook or the tumblr page feel free to reply and comment on all my tumblr stuff at guide to getting dirty dot tumblr dot com and check it out alright
00:47:38
Speaker
Anyway, thanks for listening, and this has been Episode 9 of the Struggling Archaeologist's Guide to Gettin' Dirty... Puppy Problems. This is Jenny, saying goodnight. Very shagodening.
00:47:53
Speaker
You know, there are a lot of people out there who like vampires, okay? It's not just me. And I'm an equal opportunist. I love basically all supernatural beings. So, get over yourself, alright? Just... Whatever. McNiven, out!