USA : Sunday, 31 Januray 2011 (Local Time)
Nearly 10,000 years ago, man's best friend provided protection and companionship -- and an occasional meal.
That's what researchers say after finding a bone fragment from what they are calling the earliest confirmed domesticated dog in the Americas.
University of Maine graduate student Samuel Belknap III came across the fragment while analyzing a dried-out sample of human waste unearthed in southwest Texas in the 1970s. A carbon-dating test put the age of the bone at 9,400 years, and a DNA analysis confirmed it came from a dog -- not a wolf, coyote or fox.
Because it was found deep inside a pile of human excrement and was the characteristic orange-brown color that bone turns when it has passed through the digestive tract, the fragment provides the earliest direct evidence that dogs -- besides being used for company, security and hunting -- were eaten by humans and may even have been bred as food.
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Belknap was looking into the diet and nutrition of the people who lived in the Lower Pecos region of Texas 1,000 to 10,000 years ago.
"It just so happens this person who lived 9,400 years ago was eating dog," he said. A scientific paper by him and other researchers is to be published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
Other archaeological digs have put dogs in the U.S. dating back 8,000 years or more, but this is the first time it has been scientifically proved that dogs were here that far back, he said.
Story and Foto from : www.freep.com
