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Encore - Fantastic Domesticates and Where to Find Them - Dogs - Ruins 63
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For this episode of Just the Boyz, we kick off our series on animal domesticates, starting with the oldest known domesticated animal: the dog. We are fortunate to have David as a one of the hosts as he is one of the leading public scholars when it comes to the relationship between dogs and humans throughout human history. We chat about the earliest evidence for dog domestication, the leading theories behind Howe and why dogs were domesticated, and delve into a discussion about the Siberian Fox Domestication experiment and animal research ethics.
Literature recommendations
1) "Dogs": Darcey Morey
2) "The Social Dog: Behavior and Cognition" Kominski and Marshall-Pescini
3) “Dogs: Archaeology Beyond Domestication" Bethke and Burtt
4) "Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know" Alexandra Horowitz
Transcripts
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Transcript
Holiday Announcement and Podcast Updates
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. Hey, guys, it's David. I hope you're enjoying your holiday season. The APN is going to take a quick break for the holidays. My producers, Chris, Rachel and Ashley, it's kind of a thankless job sometimes. Editing is one thing, but getting everything uploaded and recorded and scheduled and all that is also quite a laborious task. Trust me, I do this for my other podcast and I've done this for my YouTube for a long time. It's a lot of work. I hate doing it. They do it for me on here. I love that. I love them.
00:00:29
Speaker
Getting two bonus episodes here that I have appeared on on A Life in Ruins and another on Tea Break Time Travel. This episode is going to be a one I did with A Life in Ruins. Hope you enjoy them as much as I did and I will be back with you guys after the holidays. So enjoy!
Introduction to Dog Domestication
00:00:46
Speaker
Welcome to episode 63 of the Life Ruins Podcast, where you investigate the careers of those living life ruins. I'm your host Carlton Gover, and I'm joined by my co-host, as always, Connor Johnen and David Howe. In today's edition of Just the Boys, we are talking about domestication as it pertains to animal domestication.
00:01:07
Speaker
And to start off with tonight's discussion, we are absolutely fortunate to have the leading, I'd say leading public figure in dog domestication, our very own David Howe. Ethnocynology, talking about domestication today, specifically like the first animal, and please correct me if I'm wrong, David, to have been domesticated by human beings is dogs is that correct before we get into this guys i know you wait till the end of the podcast and you you tune out right when it's over and you don't listen to the end you're missing connor's jokes and you're also missing the point where i'm like hey guys
00:01:46
Speaker
Rate and review the podcast. I'm saying it now before we jump into it. Just, you know, pause, go to it where where you're at, Spotify, Instagram, you know, not Instagram, iTunes. so Rate that podcast. Review it. Give us one star. I don't care. Just review it. Leave us a little thing. Makes us look better. Makes it better for you. Carlton continue about domestication.
00:02:05
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah. Great points by David. So prior to, and and dogs come from wolves,
Exploration of Ancient Dogs
00:02:14
Speaker
correct? Can, is it Canis lupus? Canis lupus. Yes. Is the, uh, the modern gray wolf, but it's possibly from an extinct gray wolf species, but it would still be in the genus Canis for sure.
00:02:26
Speaker
Now in paleontology, there are bone crushing dogs, correct? Like in paleontology, there are a couple of species that have the label dogs. Are they truly dogs as we know them today? Or do you know anything about that background in terms of text not taxonomy? Especially here in North America, where we have these like dogs that date back millions of years ago.
00:02:45
Speaker
Yeah, so like the Borofagone, like, or Borofagone, whatever you want to say. Either way, it sounds weird. But they're like ancient canids that are, yeah we call them bone crushing dogs. But yeah to to answer your question, man, it's it's like gender or race. It's just words we attribute to something and then therefore they get categorized as something. And I was just on a podcast earlier today This guy asked me great questions and the most concise I've ever answered them. I'm like right now, but he asked me about African wild dogs and like, why are they different than regular dogs? And I was like, cause they're not dogs are wolves. They're literally in their own genus. They just happened to look and behave like dogs. And like they're in, uh, Lyacom pictus is their names, like the painted wolves. And yeah, they're not dogs in any sense. And the bone crushing dogs are not.
00:03:31
Speaker
dogs in the proper sense, but dog is like a Latin term for anything dog-like. So the the Latin, you know, name for dogs we have now is Canis lupus familiaris. So Canis dog lupus wolf familiaris, like the friendly one. So you're like the family one, the domestic one. So dog wolf friendly.
00:03:52
Speaker
Yeah. Canis lupus is dog wolf is the the the gray wolf. So like, it's just confusing. So and in this episode, when we refer to dogs, let's just refer to domestic dogs. Excellent. Honestly, one of the coolest paleontological sites I've ever seen is the Ash fall site in Nebraska, where it's with last time Yellowstone went off, it covered the Midwest and Eastern United States and ash a couple of million years ago. And there's a depression. in the natural environment, a bunch of American rhinos, they don't have the tusks. They're really weird. The whole point of this, there's like a couple dozen American rhinos that died in this depression. And you can stay have fossilized bone crushing dog paws that you can see on the surface. And you can also see just how intact they are. It's so cool. The actual rhinos aren't even fossilized because the ash produced that a layer over the bones that
00:04:47
Speaker
negated the fossilization process, so the inside of them is still soft. And you can see her bone crushing dogs removed ribs and vertebra and pieces of the rhinos off.
00:04:59
Speaker
and discard them elsewhere in the site and you can see their paw prints. Wow. Moving to and from places. It's absolutely fascinating. You can also see a pregnant rhino. It still has the fetus in the pelvis area. Solid. Crazy. And that's when that's where I first learned about bone crushing dogs years ago. Any Atwater is such a specialist in those, yeah.
00:05:19
Speaker
Yeah. Reach out to, uh, what is it? Uh, Mary Annings revenge. yeah Mary Annings. revenge so Mary underscore Annings underscore revenge. She's no longer at the museum of the Rockies, right? She's, she's not's here in the the big peach, big old Georgia. All right, David. And one of my,
00:05:36
Speaker
we've We did like ah a video before we asked you about Ameri-Indian dogs because I had never thought about them before. Prior to one of Dr. Taylor's students, Dr. Taylor was on a previous episode of ours talking about domestication-specific fetal horses. One of his new students here in the PhD program does dogs. but I never thought about them before.
00:05:57
Speaker
And when we talk about domestication, this specifically of animals, we'll get the plants later in the podcast. What's the earliest evidence or what is the current train of thought as to when wolves became domesticated?
00:06:14
Speaker
to become
Natural Process of Domestication
00:06:15
Speaker
dogs, right? Because like all dogs today are descendants of ah wolves, correct? Yes. Should we step aside and define domestication first before we get into that, or do we want to do that later? and we all i We also need to say that all dogs go to heaven, so that's also... Excellent series. Yes, so the definition for domestication as it relates to animals according to dictionary dot.com is the act or process of taming an animal for human use or companionship. that ah Is that a definition you all would agree with?
00:06:50
Speaker
I have, in my PowerPoint, very similar. It's the the systematic cultivating or taming of a population of organisms in order to accept accentuate traits that are desirable to the cultivator or tamer. So, same kind of thing. Yeah. yeah so and And humans basically have been in interacting with animals and for as long as we've been a species, right? But at some point we we decided that we wanted to change, or I don't know if that's a decision,
00:07:19
Speaker
conscious decision or? I would say dogs came to us like they and not that they domesticated themselves in that sense I hate when people say that but like we didn't actively go out and be like, let's rope some wolves and call them dogs. You know, like that just was a natural process over time. But after that, when we get goats and cows and sheep and stuff, that was more of like a, okay, we're sitting in one spot now. We don't want to go hunt anymore. Let's bring them to us. And they start corralling them, um, which would be my guess. So, so that's, and that's fascinating cause I never thought about it that way, but dogs are the earliest thing we've domesticated and we've seen them
00:07:57
Speaker
Globally correct. You see them globally by 13,000 years ago, or 15,000 when they're brought to the Americas. I personally think they're brought with the first wave, but. I think so too. I'd i'd subscribe to that. ah Shane will text me after the readiness and he's like, no. But I think Angela's last paper, Dr. Perry, a brilliant woman, I mean, brilliant researcher all around, just like 20,000 years ago is the DNA evidence. and I think it's Perry et al. It's the paper.
00:08:27
Speaker
Is there like a mitochondrial Eve for dogs, like there is humans, and for those that are listening, what I mean by mitochondrial Eve is that through DNA analysis, all humans are related to one specific otralo female Australopithecine through mitochondrial DNA in Africa. When you're talking about the DNA research into like, when's the first dog? Is there like the first mitochondrial, I don't know, is there? Yeah, the first mitochondrial dog, mama dog. Yeah, mama dog.
00:08:57
Speaker
Specifically, I don't know. I've seen whatever dog samples they got in those papers, Perry et al. It's like, or I forget what the name of the paper is, but um new evidence for the origin of the domestic dog, something like that. 2019 is Perry. It's that sample of dogs, I would say is the closest thing to that. I don't think they have like one specific dog that's like, and then there's a debate, like, is it a multi-regional domestication event? Or is it just the one in Siberia 20,000 years ago that spread? Cause it... Gotcha.
00:09:24
Speaker
much like the bow and arrow, it's a technology that then diffuses. So like if it's a great technology, it's just going to diffuse fast. Right. That's fascinating. So so what what is that site that you're talking about when you're talking about Siberia? Well, it's just in that last paper, they talk about how like all the DNA of like modern domestic dogs and like ancient dogs they find in ancient wolves clusters up in Northeast Asia, so in Siberia.
00:09:49
Speaker
if for whatever reason the people there got kind of stuck or like it was just cold and they like you know just liked it up there it became their culture and then the wolves there too kind of isolated had to quickly co-adapt because you're in the ice age tundra of northern Siberia or the forests of Siberia and like you're gonna be hunting a lot of reindeer together so eventually you're gonna run into each other and that would be the Like my thing is talking about the domestication processes and the different theories as to how that would have happened. And all of that would have been taking place up there in Siberia, whereas Angela does like the genetics.
00:10:20
Speaker
and So you've been talking about genetic evidence, but there's also, it's important to acknowledge the bone, the final evidence that shows up. Cause that's the way you, you ultimately measure or ah try to say when the first dog is, is through like more morphology of bones yeah and whatnot. And that's kind of gets back to the point of, or what does domestication do to dogs and how does that appear in the skeleton?
00:10:49
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great question that segues into the last one too, where like also ties in with that. Earth evolution, it's not Pokemon. You don't give something to Firestone and evolve it, or it doesn't evolve at level 36 to Blastoise, right? Like overnight. Damn, that is such a good, that's great, dude. Well, I've been doing this for a few years now. figure it out what works. But right. Yeah. So you can't just evolve something overnight at will. So in that sense, at 20,000 years ago, we have dogs 21,000 years ago, what do they look like? So that's where we find all of those
00:11:24
Speaker
When I say we I was talking about this someone else did like I hate when people say they Like when they found or they that leads to like academic like fear Like we don't want to think that those we as in like a collective like Western canon have found this That's why I say we I should establish that but I wasn't on these papers is what I'm getting at Yeah, it doesn't evolve overnight. So we find like different We as ah you know academics find dog skulls in different caves around Eurasia, in Belgium, Germany, France, I think the Netherlands is another one, and then way up in Siberia, and also in the Altai Mountains, and like they look like dogs. So you compare them to dog specimens you have at your Zoarch labs, and they look similar, but they also look like wolves at the same time. It doesn't happen overnight. So at what point, I think that one's like 36,000 years old. I think one is a dog. and i think
00:12:19
Speaker
Angela has found her and her team that like those aren't dogs based on DNA, but like again, it's a species name that we apply to something. So like the dog DNA that we have that all allocates to Northern Siberia over there. What is that kind of dog? You know, like it is just hard to determine. So I personally think.
00:12:39
Speaker
Like what we know of as a dog now is a fully in appearance by 20,000 years ago, certainly by the Neolithic, right? and Like a pet dog, a domestic dog. But before that, upwards of 50,000 years or so, wolves are going to be learning what to do around people and like how to interact with them. And like, that's going to start changing their niche, but evolution doesn't happen fast. So let's say 20,000 years is the solid date. And I think I went completely far from your question.
00:13:05
Speaker
No, no, no. That was fascinating, dude. Yeah. Yeah. So, but you're saying you're mentioning that it comes in stages. So you're not just like, like you said, it's not just overnight. You get canids in different stages of domestication and they appear like that. And then you as a discipline.
00:13:21
Speaker
have defined what a dog is and that's kind of where you take. There's some morphology that has decided that this is a dog now and there's some DNA that's saying that but there's also lots of cool research you can do about pre-cainted dogs right as well.
00:13:39
Speaker
Right. And in the sense that we would separate regionally distinct humans like Denisovans, Neanderthals, and Homo sapiens at 20,000 years, we can distinguish between a dog and a wolf. That population of wolves, though, is no longer around because they are dogs. So did did any of the Denisovans, Neanderthals, or even the Java hobbits, is is there a current thought in terms that some of these other either subspecies of humans or different species of humans have domesticated dogs.
Theories on Dog Domestication Origins
00:14:14
Speaker
there's a book called the invaders but pat shipman and the invaders the invaders and Dr. Pat Shipman, and it talks about like whether or not Neanderthals had humans or if humans and their dogs helped eradicate Neanderthals or not eradicate, but you know, the whole thing, like up subsume them. But there's no way to tell, man, if they're like, if the hobbits or if Denisovans or Neanderthals had wolves, there's just no evidence for it other than like wolf skulls at caves. But we could argue that like those wolves were chill and just hanging and not eating the people and they were like talking to it, you know?
00:14:49
Speaker
And what would cause wolves to interact with humans? right like Because like as you said before, right there's no like if this was an Eevee, there's no firestone, waterstone, or thunderstone to evolve them into a Vaporeon, Jolteon, or Flareon, I think it is. um What causes this process? Because you said earlier in this episode, like After dogs, you see sheep, cattle, some of these other where humans are like, I'm not moving anywhere. I want those things to be close to me so I don't have to hunt them and I want them to be chill as hell. What was the catalyst?
00:15:30
Speaker
for this domestic domestication process to occur ah based on what we we currently understand ah for dogs who have occurred. You just blew my mind because I just realized Eevee, Kanto Pokemon, Kanto Pokedex number 133, I think? I think so, yeah. Did someone verify that? 132, 133? If you don't watch the YouTube version of this podcast, Dave Connor is shaking his head because he does, we're just freaking nerds right now. I believe it's 153. Anyway, he's a dog. That's a really good point. I mean, he's he's either either a rabbit or a dog. He's not a cat. Evie's a dog. Yeah. And Evie is the first Pokemon in, whoa, dude, in the original Kanto decks that he he, like he's known for evolving into different things as like the regionally specialized dude.
00:16:19
Speaker
that's cool they knew what they were doing man awesome but yes i got so sidetracked give me the tldr of your question because ADHD well how did wolves become domesticated that is the entire video i did with stephan to answer all that i would have to check you have to check that one out and the first one on my channel took a two-parter but the tldr of it is that you Humans and wolves are extremely similar animals in behavior and prey breadth. Primates are very social. Wolves have an extremely complex social structure. ah They communicate and they hunt with social cues and visual things. and There's always, like, if I say there's dominance hierarchies, I'll get canceled by like 50,000 people. If I say there's not dominance hierarchies, I'll get canceled by the other 50,000 people. So I don't talk about it. But we have similar social structures that humans would have tried to replicate and that wolves easily could have like adapted to with people. They're just like, like when I yell at Strider for trying to eat my food and I yell no, which will cancel me because some people are like, you can't correct your dog. do You can tell your dog no. the Like,
00:17:27
Speaker
Sorry, I stand on that ground. You can tell your dog no, dude. Paleoindians and ancient people in Siberia, they were telling their dogs no left and right because they're going to bite children. They're going to bite you. You tell them no. But yes, you you can tell them those things and they understand cues. And even if they don't understand modern English or whatever the language was back then, they would understand the aggressive like no from somebody and would look cower because a wolf does that when they nip at each other and they bark at each other. and it's really cool to think about how like ancient people were done. and the And the quick way before we wrap this session up is like, I think Bernie Taylor had mentioned it when he was on here and like how people, you know, talked with animals if there's, and you said, it's not really how they talked to animals. It's like they knew how to read nature and things like that, uh, with dogs. Oh, Jesus. That fuck that, that comment by Bernie. Yeah. Where's like, yeah, all Indians were were freaking animal wizards. It's like, nah, dude. Right.
00:18:24
Speaker
And not to say that he's he's right. But in this case, like if you think of Pavlovian science.
Communication and Domestication Methods
00:18:30
Speaker
ancient humans would have communicated with dogs, like via a language of food. ah And like, well, they both want food. They both eat reindeer a lot. They both eat elk. They both eat bison. And they're like, okay, I will throw you some bison if you do not bite me. And it was like a mutual exchange. Gotcha. Food motivated of information. All right. So, uh, we'll go ahead and take our first break here through second one. We'll be right back with episode 63 of life from his podcast. We'll be right back. centur instead the youla
00:19:06
Speaker
seemo If you didn't see Stefan's story on June 21st, 2021, That is him shirtless in his garage wearing a Roman helmet with a broomstick on the top of it. Just and what a guy. Honestly, he's a lad and that made me cackle more than most things I ever have. So anyway, honestly, you're bringing us in. I saw his video. I saw his video on Sheffield archeology news. Talk about like the fall of Sheffield. Awesome video though. shit I know, I know. Stefan listens. That was an excellent video on Sheffield archeology. God, I hope they make it.
00:19:39
Speaker
Yeah, so that was at Stefan Milo bringing us in and this is episode 63 of A Life in Rubens podcast where we sometimes talk archaeology and sometimes talk about true facts, history, whatever it is. Today is the the backdoor pilot for the Ethnocynology podcast. How's that doing by the way? You got Donnie Dust as episode one, right?
00:20:00
Speaker
Yeah, ah you know how's any other project I have doing? like just You're too busy, man. That's that's your thing. you're You are absolutely a brilliant individual. You're just so busy. I literally haven't sat down until right now today. <unk> man you're You're Jim Carrey from Yes Man.
00:20:18
Speaker
I know it's bad and it leads to just your repugnant mental health issues and it's awful. And I'm like, Oh yeah. I need to write a book. Oh yeah. Tori and I are doing a book. Oh right. Yeah. I got to do this video. Oh yeah. I got to like, Oh shit. I got to exercise today. I got to do this. I have to eat this many fats today. I have to eat this many. yeah It just like becomes a whole thing and I got to work 40 hours a week. So let's talk dogs. Oh yeah. I was on a podcast earlier today before this totally forgot about it. all already So what are the four characteristics of dumb domestication? Right? Cause we've talked about it. We did the definition, but Physiologically, domestication changes an animal, correct? Like, shredded. God, he's such a beautiful looking dog, but he doesn't look like a wolf as well as, you know, a Corgi and other animals go through those same traits. So what, what are those four physical characteristics? He doesn't look like a wolf as much as a Corgi does. Is that what you're saying?
00:21:12
Speaker
A core you looks far less like a wolf than Strider. Strider is a gorgeous looking dog. And I saw your post day when he was a puppy. I don't think I ever saw Strider as a puppy. I think the first time I ever saw Strider was I was coming to your backyard. It was like a, it was a graduate student meeting. Yeah. I remember, I remember you had crave, but this post is like, yeah, we'll do this like digging competition and I'll cause you guys wanted a fire pit, but in the Facebook invite, we'll do it. We'll do a ah one by one digging competition. You could actually get the fastest one by one. That's frigging lame. And then talking to you guys later, you guys are like, yeah, we just wanted to fire pit, wanted to con people into digging it for us. And I'm like, all right, but not start out that was just me. You know what? That makes sense. Just Tom, sorry. People are doing shit for me. Also at work, if ah there's something I don't want to do or I'm like, oh, this is confusing. I will pretend to be confused and Chris will come over and be like, oh no, it's it's pretty easy, man. And he'll just do the whole thing for me. And I'm like, all right.
00:22:09
Speaker
It works. Anyway, so if that happens to you guys, I'm sorry, or if I've done that to you in the past, we were talking about trade to domestication. So there's like four, yeah cor how how did we end up with corgis? Okay. so First of all, I need, to I want to see a wolf head on a corgi body.
00:22:24
Speaker
That's called a Swedish Lapund. Look it up. Oh my God. Okay. That's going to happen. so chris sweet wolf wound i think so did it right now So you're talking about, there's, there's four characteristics, morphological characteristics. There's six or to like a key to behavior for domestication is you need to have a diet easily supplied by humans. So wolves and us have the same brave breath back in the day. Yes, we hunted.
00:22:50
Speaker
And then you two, it's a fast growth rate and short birth spacing. An elephant takes 22 months to have but like a baby. It gestates. It's pretty quick. I forget what it is for wolves and it's a few months. Swedish Valhunds or wolfhounds are ugly as fuck. I'll take the Corgi any day of the week. Wait, look up the Swedish Lapund. That's what I'm looking up. What?
00:23:13
Speaker
It looks like a corgi with a curly tail, like a pug, but furrier. Oh, that's the wrong one. Swedish Lapooned. L-A-P-P-H-U-N-D. Okay. It's Swedish Wolfooned. Yeah. That's the one I looked up. It's ugly. It's a corgi wolf, bro. I'll take a corgi. I like the colors of a corgi. Oh my God. This is weird. This is a wolf with stumpy legs, dude. Oh, get out of here. And no tail.
00:23:41
Speaker
i We're not looking at the same dog, dude. I'm looking at it right now. It's a Swedish wolfhound. I'm looking at a tail right here. Yeah, it has a really fuzzy tail, but there's some pictures where they're cropped. I'm not a fan. Oh, I see, I see. Don't crop dog tails. No cap, don't crop. I saw a gold retriever with a crop tail the other day. It mentally broke my mind. Yeah, that's ridiculous. It's like declawing a cat. Like, come on, I'll do that.
00:24:08
Speaker
yeah then anyway back right focus One, diet easily supplied by humans. Two, fast growth rate and short birth spacing. Three, docile temperaments. Wolves can have docile temperaments, and like when you feed them enough food, they will listen to you. like We see that with wolf trainers today. and so like If you think about this as goats and cows and guinea pigs and llamas, like this is the case.
00:24:30
Speaker
Willingness to breed in captivity. Pandas will not do it in front of people, so they cannot. Dogs clearly don't have a problem. Goats don't have a problem. Five is a dominance hierarchy. um This one's debated, but wolves, obviously we can see up some kind of dominance hierarchy.
00:24:47
Speaker
There usually is like a head bull in like a cow situation kind of thing. And then do not panic when enclosed is the last one. You can have a few of these, not all of them. um And that's how it works. So any of the domestic animals, like goats, I guess if you trap ibex in like a, you know, like corral, they'll just be like, all right, this is my fate. I don't know. I haven't trapped a wild ibex to see.
00:25:10
Speaker
But as you mentioned those characteristics, like only some animals can be domesticated. Like they tried with zebras, but zebras has such a prey mentality that they're always skittish, that you just can't domesticate them. And I think ah an extraordinarily interesting case study was the Fox fox domestication project, which took place in Russia.
00:25:35
Speaker
Yeah. Uh, do you want to get into that? I absolutely want to get do into that. Like, so you know, you know, Yama's awesome. However, like I watched, I think like years ago when we first started this podcast, I watched, we had one of the English participants of the wolf domestication project give a talk at Boulder and i I talked to you guys about it immensely. yeah I was so fascinated by it and how they talked about those traits. And because like the domestication of dogs happened so long ago, which is always interesting. Like Connor mentioned, all dogs go to heaven. However, with that argument, dogs are not one of God's creations. If you subscribe to that,
00:26:25
Speaker
Dogs by some definitions are technically human because they are a human invention and originally were a tool. And it's only within the past like 200 years have dogs become more of a, what's the word, accessory?
00:26:42
Speaker
yeah rather than like a tool. There's tons of different indigenous like mythologies on like how dogs were and or like how they were created and things and most of them say that like like in and more or less like the stories kind of talk about how they are some kind of intermediary between animal and human.
00:27:02
Speaker
Like they don't see them as animal. They don't see them as human. They're like in the middle. So that you knew in the mikmak saw them as like traders to the animal kingdom and they couldn't chew on other animal bones. They could only eat fish. and Can I intersect in that? Yeah. Cause like in Pawnee mythology, we have earth lot, we have, and like, so we have animal lodges in which, and like specific animals have a place of being where they,
00:27:28
Speaker
produce, and I know Matt Reed, the Pawnee Nation tip, I was listening to this and it looked, and that's fine. There's animal lodges in which there are animal powers, but there isn't a dog animal lodge. However, dogs are intrinsic to Pawnee mythology, but there's this divorce between dogs and North American, specifically Great Plains animals. And like something that I've always been fascinated about, especially being you know friends with you, David, and and knowing through you, I've learned more about dogs, just period. Things that I've never thought about before.
00:28:11
Speaker
and thinking about the domestication process and how I believe as you do that dogs came to North America with humans rather than dogs being domesticated in North America, isolated from dogs being domesticated elsewhere.
00:28:26
Speaker
that even in our mythology, my mythology, that there are kind of like these little, I wouldn't say like splitting hairs, but like knowing what I know through you, there's other animals that have these lodges and this medicine that is taught from these animals to the Pawnee people.
00:28:45
Speaker
But dogs don't have that, but they are still have a a, I don't know, necessarily say sacred dogs have a place, but it's different from the natural North American animals, which makes me really think about like, well, did dogs come here with Pawnee ancestral Pawnees or ancestral Great Plains? People are ancestral North Americans in general.
00:29:08
Speaker
And like that's my anthropologist thinking, if you know what I mean? Yeah. Like to pick that up, like, okay, well, where's the dog lodge? Where's the dog medicine? And it's not there, but dogs are still in integral to our being as ponies. Are they just lumped into the human lodge? I would think so. That's the case in most societies. They're just there. They're just there. Did you have a question? I was just going to say, so where there, there were wolves in North America.
00:29:38
Speaker
Yeah. you around Around that time. So, okay. Dire wolves and wolves, they got here. Okay. Just wanted to make sure. I couldn't, I couldn't remember if there was like, they were isolated. Can I go ahead and stand on the record? Cause I loved it. And this is one of the reasons I really fastened by what David talks about is like, there's only a couple.
00:29:56
Speaker
North American, like if you look at native ah North American indigenous nations, there's kind of like this one animal they subscribe to like Lakotas are like, we're the Buffalo Pawnees. What up? Hence the freaking wolf. That's not the side. If you're looking at the YouTube version, where is it? It's on the really worse side. It's here. Anyways, he's pointing to his arm touches pointing to my, to to specifically the wolf one. It's like,
00:30:21
Speaker
Pawnees were known as the wolves of the plains. And like our and Native American sign language, which does exist, like our symbol for ourselves is wolf ears. And that's how we would identify ourselves. is like
00:30:36
Speaker
that's our animal that we really subscribe to. Like that's us. Like we consider ourselves as wolves and other tribes looked us looked at us as such. Cause like, there's also some cultural stuff where like when we'd spy on other tribes or do other things, we would don wolf pelts. So if you were looking at us from the Prairie from miles away, you'd just be like, okay, there's a wolf being an asshole watching us. When really it was like,
00:31:03
Speaker
bunch of Pawnees like. Those are some good looking horses. Women, not so hot, but those horses though, they're looking good. well Shade throne. Anyways, sorry. i'm I apologize. David, please drop wisdom. Oh, you're good. Yeah. So like the ah Mongol reindeer herders believe they're descended from wolves and that dogs and them have a shared kinship and and ancestry. And like when you die, you can be reincarnated as a dog or a dog can be reincarnated as a wolf or as as a human. I mean, pretty cool. ah The Seneca up in New York thought like, you know, during creation,
00:31:37
Speaker
like everything had the chance or not everything but just dogs had the chance to be like human I guess like their essence or their spirit and because like dogs are promiscuous and gross like the spirits were like no you can't be human so like it's humans job to like care for them so they like again they're seen as some non-human But non-animal creature and it's like they've always been that way ah Which is very cool to me and then like, you know the the mythology all around the world dogs have something to do with death Like Fenrir his sons eat the you know the moon or the Sun or whatever the Anubis He's the god of the dead not not a god of death. He's the only god that like likes you and he's not he's always benevolent and The Cerberus guards the River Styx, or like he's the like Hades' his pet, and then the there's like dogs. I think the Huron thought there was a big dog that guards the river to the afterlife that, you know, if it liked you, you could pass. If it didn't like you, you couldn't pass. And then obviously the Aztecs believed like a dog could like carry you across. Your dogs wait for you to carry you across the river. And and then they take you through the Nine Lands of the Dead. Like it's a huge thing.
00:32:50
Speaker
because you don't know how to get there. Your dog already knows how to get through the nine lands of the dead for some reason. But anyway, dogs have always been a thing in most of these indigenous cultures that I have researched. And they also play like a significant role with death in the afterlife. Which is absolutely fascinating. I mean, one, your TikToks, you have one specific TikTok series where Strider plays Anubis. That's the video I made for Raven. Yeah, it is.
00:33:16
Speaker
ah Like I have an image in my head of how Strider, like what his voice sounds like. And when I watched her TikTok where it's just Strider, just like kind of panting at the camera. And he has this like really deep voice. No more. it Just giggles so much. And it's such a good video. I need to do more of that. Yeah. it's funny Strider's the best boy in the world. He's a good dog. He's a good dog. He's such a handsome dog. I can't stress that enough. Like out of all the Wyoming mountain dogs, like I wish all of them looked like Strider, but he's the,
00:33:50
Speaker
Yeah, Gil was pissed. I neutered him. And I was like, I don't want a 90 pound hellhound running around or my house if I moved to New York again. We got very sidetracked from the Siberian Foss experiment. So I forgot that was the point of this 18 minutes ago. That was a great segue, though. And like, I'm always like, I literally can answer anything. yeah We could make this like three podcasts if we want, or I can just make my own. So we started this with like Connor saying, let's go through like all like two dozen domesticated animals and we're still stuck on numero uno. I mean, that's, I think I suggested that to Connor's dismay. I can't remember, but like when I hit them all, I was, I was, I was, I was pro dog. Come on. he was anti cat All of all of the animals. Yeah, you have a cat and I don't know. She's annoying Winston. What your female cat's name is Winston Connor. No, no, no. That's in the past. I have a cat named Calypso. Calypso. Winston was broken. Human bonds.
00:34:49
Speaker
right? No, that was, uh, that was Brooks cat Winston. No, it wasn't. lot It was Sherlock. Yeah. Yeah. That cat was large. Uh, anyway, kat let's start the next one. You can pick my brain about anything, but you, because we tease the Siberian Fox spirit, we should probably talk about that. And then the rest of it can kind of be answered with Stefan's video, but Yeah. If you want to learn what free and Soviet Union Russians did with Fox's, this is in terms of like understanding the investigation. This is nuts. So we'll be right back with segment three of episode 63 of life rooms podcast. We'll continue on with the Fox experiment. Privyet! And here with Joseph Stalin and Premier George Malenkov and comrades. i have I have great idea. Great idea. We domesticate Fox.
00:35:42
Speaker
We demysticate Fox and we released Fox to Capitalist West, where they eat all capitalist cats and dogs, and then the capitalists will will crumble in society without their favorite pets. This is a great idea, yes? My God. um I don't even know like what to do with that.
00:36:03
Speaker
Uh, yeah. Uh, who's stalling?
Siberian Fox Experiment and Ethics
00:36:07
Speaker
I think you're stalling, stalling for time. So He's the, he's the brainchild behind.
00:36:21
Speaker
the domesticated fox project. He passed away, though, back in the 80s, I believe. I mean, the guy's a fossil. He's gone, probably. I think he died in the 80s because now that whole project has been taken over by Ludemilla. Ludemilla Trutt. I don't know how to say it to your tribe. Yeah, she's she's in control now. Wait, there's still, there's still, this isn't ongoing. Okay. Well, first of all, what is the Siberian Siberian Fox experiment? And when did it start? First off, it might be true. trust threat I don't know, but I just been like, yes, that's the, the the author and whatever the word was, but, um,
00:36:58
Speaker
ah Yeah. So the Siberian Fos experiment. So the Yayev was a Soviet geneticist and he went to Siberia. One story I said, said he was like exiled there and he was supposed to do that. Like, I don't know like who came up with that. I don't know. That's true. But anyway, the guy is up there breeding tame silver foxes. So Vulpes, Vulpes. And I believe Vulpes can't remember.
00:37:20
Speaker
and taming them so that they can better use their furs or like, like, you know, get the furs easier. So but being a geneticist, he was like, all right, well, let's get two birds stowed at once. And he bred a bunch of foxes that were like docile and then ones that were aggressive as a control. So when what he would do and his like researchers would stick like a gloved hand in the, uh, the cages and if the fox is cowered or like hissed at him, or if they cowered and like didn't really like a hissed at him, he called him docile. And if they like hissed at him and tried to bite the glove, he called him aggressive or he called him dragons. And that eventually, you know, after several generations of doing that, I think about 13, the docile group had essentially
00:38:13
Speaker
This is debated, but domestication syndrome and, but I mean, outwardly, they just showed, you know, floppy ears, spotted coats, increased eye contact with humans and like tails that wagged and they were like more cute. So, and the aggressive foxes were just like, nope.
00:38:31
Speaker
So what that does is show us that like, yeah, and the arguments with this are like twofold. One, it's just a terrible way to like treat animals like within the cages and stuff. But you know, it was the sixties or whatever. So we didn't have, I guess, compassion for animals or something like that. But it's still going on today. The cages are better, I think now, but then they were like little chicken coops. But the cages are better now under Obama. The cages were too small for the children. I've made it better. to Make America great again.
00:39:01
Speaker
Who's president? Who's that? Oh, okay. Um, yeah. so
00:39:12
Speaker
Moving on. So this whole project, as you mentioned, the foxes they're using are these like gray silver foxes, which were specifically bred back in the day. They're like a subspecies of red fox, like you said, for their fur. And yeah, he started doing some Mendelian stuff with foxes to figure out domestication, but rather with like flowers or peas or whatever Mandel did. and Yeah. And he was into Mendelian genetics, but the Soviet government wasn't for some reason. I forget like what that deal was. And like the fox cages being bad is like one argument that it's like a ah bad thing that contributes to their behavioral changes. And, um, also he did it like extremely controlled selecting for those traits and like knowing what a domestic animal should be already. So he gives it a bias and he in 13 generations made a domestic Fox, but like, you know, 20,000 years ago, it probably took way longer than that. it Probably took like 50,000 years before that to like get to the stage. And that's pretty nuts, right? Because the more domesticated this PC gets, the more breeding cycles it has, right? Yeah. And I think according to Angela's latest work, 20,000 years is like the genetic signature for like a modern dog that we have or like what we would call a dog. So I don't know what they would have looked like, but that would be like a domestic ash or domestic ish thing. but But didn't Bernie Taylor tell us that there are Burmese mountain dogs in Upper Paleolithic rock art from 35,000 years ago? He did tell us that. Yeah, those were words that came out of his mouth. Yeah, we also were told that there'd be a border wall, but I don't see one of those. Now that I wanted one, I'm happy there's not one. But you see, I'm just saying empty words. I don't want there to be dogs in those caves. Well, I mean, I do want there to be dogs in those caves, I should say, but I don't... How should I say this?
00:41:03
Speaker
There aren't the dogs that he's seeing in those caves at all. He he also says it's a crocodile and a giraffe. so Hey, remember, red means stop, but we're going to go ahead. and Another aspect of this Fox farm is it's still an ongoing for fur producing place, right? Because they can only afford, I think it's like 500 foxes and the foxes that don't make that 500 cut.
00:41:27
Speaker
do become gloves, I imagine, which is another ethical aspect of that whole thing is like, but it also supports the business. Yeah. It gets, you know, Russia and like, yeah, that was like a huge wave of people wanting domestic Fox's, but like, you still have a wild ass animal in your house and like you can't, it's like, you know, would I get one? Absolutely. But to what I recommend, he will get one. No.
00:41:53
Speaker
ah But yeah, so I mean, the the implications of this, we don't have to go into like the whole Fox thing because we're going for hours, but would be that like, yes, you can domesticate an animal relatively quickly if you wanted to. So my thought process is like once people realized, OK, these wolves are not going to hurt us or these like, you know, we share kinship with these animals, which I i believe would personally be if we want to get post-percessional about it would be the case.
00:42:22
Speaker
that they would start selecting for it like they would know like kill the bad ones and like the good ones and stuff or like the bad ones just they just kept away with like fire and stuff so yeah I mean that's the implications of that and then ironically the the earliest date for dogs we have now is also in Siberia so cool is that is that that 20,000 year old date you're talking about mm-hmm
Dogs in the Americas and Ecosystem Impact
00:42:45
Speaker
out. Yeah. And that's like that glaciation kept all those groups of people, your ancestors really up, up there. And like, those are the, also the people that went eventually over to, you know, the Americas and brought dogs with them. I know some people don't think that, you know, paleo indians had dogs, but I, I think they did. They would have had them at that point. So I don't know.
00:43:07
Speaker
But if we want to say that they cross on boats, then it's really hard to have dogs. But the Polynesians did that, did it well. There's dogs on Hawaii when Captain Cook got there. So it's possible. I saw a dude eat at the reservoir the other weekend because he tried to get his dog on the paddle board and the dog was not about it, flipped it. And the dude just wham, smacked his head on the rocks on the side. He used to hang out and wrap a new one, I guess. yeah I guess so. Connor, what were you going to say? I was going to say the same thing, something about dogs on paddle boards. because that's shop That's exactly where my mind went. so yeah I guess I have a philosophical question for you, and I think we kind of hinted at this. Is so is this experiment worth figuring out what that like ah ah as a proof of concept for domestication? like Is it worth
00:43:55
Speaker
going through and you know maybe treating animals a little cruelly to ultimately see if domestication is possible. la of what um scared to peace this is anthropologist david and then david's actual i don't know let's I don't know, man. like you you got you got You got to break a few eggs to make some cake or whatever the thing is. To make an omelette, but also cakes, do count. Yeah, so it's it's what it is. like There was just so much, like DaVinci and like all of them were just cutting animals open, doing whatever they wanted. We like found some stuff out like that. like we We have the basis of it now, but
00:44:34
Speaker
Yeah. Do I recommend like we treat animals poorly now to do research? Definitely not chimps. Definitely not apes. I don't want that to happen. I really don't want any animal to get hurt if it doesn't have to or like be put under unnecessary stress. Spiders. Take all the spiders and snakes you need. Yeah. I'm not a huge fan of those. O'Connor has a spider bite. Spider bite that I'm going to, I'm going to die from. So that's cool. Yeah, but I don't know. So.
00:45:00
Speaker
Um, everything I just said was a character piece. So just, you know, take it with a grain of salt. Uh, yeah, it's, it's a tough question. What do you guys think? I don't know. I think it's like, I kind of go back to like, uh, they have statues of, I can't remember where the statue is, but they have statue of like lab mice somewhere. in russia Yeah. Yeah. Because they, they've basically tested everything on.
00:45:26
Speaker
Most things that are like a analogggle and similar to humans, they tried to test on lab mice or anything like that. so they the These animals have been used for long periods of time, but have done a lot of good for humankind in general. so i I go both ways. I don't think we need it anymore.
00:45:44
Speaker
yeah but guess one are on it now Yeah, yeah, I can't say that people in the past were significantly bad or significantly good unless they did really awful things. I mean, fundamentally, we have the same brains as we did like 10,000 years ago. Sure. People are still people. But we just didn't have like collective knowledge of like the animal kingdom and the fact that they can like ration and, you know, all that. They also only had the same fauna that were in their area, unless they were like, you know, at the Coliseum in Rome. Saw some exotic stuff, you know, but
00:46:15
Speaker
The first animal in space I think was a dog before as a person and then they sent a chimp Luka Luka What's the dog's name? I have it on my post-it notes here to do a first about it in space But it might have it they might have sent mice before that. I don't like Laka Laka Laka Laka. There we go. Sorry. My son was coming out Laka. No, they do not send fried potatoes in space I But sadly, the dog did not come back alive. Yeah. And that's that's the thing. Dogs will over they'll eat until they pass out and die. So that's like some I remember my like old World War two that uncle in law. I remember telling him that he was like, you see that you're he's Irish. but He's like your cousin there. She'll she'll eat all the food and she'll get full. She'll get full. I mean, he doesn't have an Irish accent at all. But he's like your dog there.
00:47:10
Speaker
He'll just keep eating and keep eating until he upchucks it. And I didn't know what upchucked meant, so I had to ask him because the guy's from the 40s. Anyway, but yeah, I think that's how the dog died at like over eight because the the food dispensers like didn't work right.
00:47:24
Speaker
It overheated, so the true cause of Laika's death wasn't made public until 2002. She died hours after getting into space. Overheating, caused by a failure of the central R7 sustainer to separate from the payload. I don't know what that means. I'm not a science guy, but... Damn. I guess I only knew the old explanation. I mean, I could be dead wrong. It's like, shoot me if I'm wrong. I'm just trying to be quick about this with the Google. You can be totally right. Yeah, no, you're good.
00:47:50
Speaker
What other questions did you guys have for me? I remember, like, we're we're doing this segment two days later, but... A week later. Oh. I have no perception of time. See, after watching the YouTube version, I'm back at my house. That's why the sudden drastic change of scenery. We wanted to move into, unless Connor has a different idea, I'm with the remaining minutes we have left, like, what happened to a Mera Indian dogs? I know we did ah a video on it a while ago.
00:48:18
Speaker
Yeah, this is like my most requested video too. And I'm like, guys, we did one already, but like, I don't have one on YouTube, I guess. But yeah, it's all the dogs came in with people in the Americas, like paleo Indians, or at least like the archaic, ah archaic indigenous peoples came over in later waves, brought dogs.
00:48:39
Speaker
Anyway, those dogs were here and they're like a dingo looking type thing and a small little dog, just brown, yeah like a Carolina swamp dog or a Carolina dingo. And those turns into all the other breeds and stuff that are here, but they all got completely replaced by The, and they interbred with coyotes, they interbred with wolves, they're back and forth and stuff. And actually black wolves, that's from breeding with a dog. Like that there's no black wolves in the wild. Well, I mean, there are now, but it's from an intermixing with dogs. Yeah. And they all got replaced when the Europeans came because there's just so many more European dogs that came here. And like, like in the case of the Chihuahua, yeah, it's a, um,
00:49:22
Speaker
It's a, you know, it's a Mesoamerican dog in origin, but like it has bred with so many European dogs and then been bred back to a Chihuahua at this point that it's just a European dog. There's no more pre-contact dogs, which is arguably sad and like we don't have any, but I mean like it's just dogs are dogs. Like they just, they just slam each other all the time. So like they're just gonna, the dogs do what dogs do. It's not really like,
00:49:48
Speaker
I don't think that's like a genocide in itself. It's like, it's, you know, the culture is gone from those dogs and we don't get to see them anymore, but it's just, you know, nature. People could have chosen not to do it, but yeah. Well, they could have chosen not to have sex with the dogs too, but they, they could have chosen not to, you know, rape and pillage an entire continent. But anyway.
00:50:05
Speaker
On this episode of bestiality with life and ruins, this might be a stupid question. So all evidence points to people bringing them over and not domesticating them again in and North America? like Yes, currently the evidence suggests that they were not domesticated here. Okay. um And that's just genetic genetic that all matches across the continents and and whatnot. I still think it's a valid theory, it's just no way to test it, but like the man's best friend, man's worst enemy, like you bring dogs into an ecosystem that have never seen a dog and people, those dogs can bring rabies, they can bring all kinds of different worms from the old world, all kinds of stuff like that.
00:50:48
Speaker
And, uh, when the paleoindians got here and all this megaphone is here, they could be, you know, devocating in rivers, putting those like jardia in that, like all our, you know, whatever kind of worms. And then if that has rabies and it bites a rabbit with rabies or something like that, and then a saber tooth bites that animal, then that gets rabies and then bites mammoths. You know, it's just, it could cause a hyper disease and things like that, which would cause like a really quick wipeout of animals, just like smallpox did to the people here.
00:51:17
Speaker
There's no way to test that because you can't really see it, but it's an interesting thing to think about because you have this like, like, I mean, well, and the on the podcast, on this note, like if you you're in the entire history, if you think about like, as Bob talks about it, entire history of the world, you have nothing going on until the first homo habilis like cracks a rock together ah in half. And then like you have this like boom of tools and like humans just populate the earth like millions of years later.
00:51:42
Speaker
in that time, no animal, except like a remora fish, like attaching itself to ah an eel, or a manorae. Wow, that was different. and like really cooperates with each other like that in the way that humans and dogs do. Like we literally speak to each other and like the North American megafauna and fauna here just not only see like what looks like a wolf, which is usually bad news coming, but they just see this giant like hairless primate with sharp rocks coming at them and like they're teamed up and they're like, Oh God. And then they all get wiped out either from climate or that, but I don't know. I just all around the world. It's just a cool relationship that
00:52:21
Speaker
exists and I think I maybe I said it in the first segment but like dogs are a cool artifact of our like ice age past because they're like ah they're a link between us and the animal world I think it's like why we love dogs so much They're a human technology. Yeah. I think Angela calls them a ah biotechnology, which is cool. And those like the videos of them hunting the cats and stuff or the mountain lions, it's just like you're sending robots to like hunt something. Like really, it's all it is. Like you you you program them to do something and they did. I don't know. Dogs just fascinating. So the paleo Indians released biological warfare on North America. A letter with Dean accusing them of early genocide.
00:53:06
Speaker
You know, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna point fingers here, but I think it's, like I don't know if that's like my main theory, but I do like to ponder that theory just because I like dogs, so I'm biased. But like, it's interesting to think about because dogs can cause a lot of harm to an environment. Just like the one under my feet drooling on my feet right now. It's gross. Get out of here. He just moaned.
00:53:27
Speaker
Um, I think that's it, right? Yeah. That's, that's it for us for this episode. We'll be back, I guess, like what next time we'll do, we'll continue this domestication talk, talk about different animals. Oh, right. Yeah. We're going to do all the other animals and stuff. We can do more dogs and stuff too. Yeah. That looks like we're doing a series now. We'll do that. And then we'll get really boring and go into domesticated plants. and Actually though, they can be amazing. Yeah. So amazing.
00:53:54
Speaker
David, thank you so much for letting us bombard you with questions for this episode. It's absolutely fascinating to hear you talk about dogs. You're such a ah a fountain of my knowledge. You're a bark box of dog knowledge in the archaeological record. It just keeps coming and coming. You also, the other day when we were talking on the phone, you told me I was the cryptocurrency of archaeology.
00:54:13
Speaker
I forget what the context was. but I did. I'll have to op to explain that later. Please remember to rate and review our podcast on iTunes. Tell us we suck. Tell us we're good. Whatever it is, all that stuff helps us. And remember, no cats.
00:54:30
Speaker
Yeah, and also reach out to us if you have questions. Also, I got awesome stickers in the mail the other day from Amelia. Oh, yeah. She's a Muslim too, a couple of weeks ago. I just got back from the field, so I just got them. She's awesome. Let's have a look up, look up her. We've got to get her on the show. We can get like an ASL interpreter. Absolutely. I was thinking about that today. Definitely do that. I need to throw those on a water bottle. So yeah, that's been episode 63 of Life from its podcast. See you later.
00:55:01
Speaker
Why is corn the most successful aggregate in the world? Because it's not wheat, it's amazing.
00:55:20
Speaker
The Archaeology Podcast Network is 10 years old this year. Our executive producer is Ashley Airy, our social media coordinator is Matilda Seabreck, and our chief editor is Rachel Rodin. The Archaeology Podcast Network was co-founded by Chris Webster and Tristan Boyle in 2014 and is part of CulturoMedia and DigTech LLC. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at w www.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.