Dog: It’s What Was for Dinner in Texas 9,400 Years Ago

The oldest domesticated dog in the Americas was probably very similar to this modern-day Peruvian dog, say scientists

The partial skullbone of a dog much like the Peruvian breed above wound up in somebody’s dinner in Texas 9,400 years ago, according to new research. Scientists recently found the bone and identified it as being part of the oldest domesticated dog yet found in the Americas.

“Not only were (dogs) most likely companions as they are today, they served as protection, hunting assistants, and also as a food source,” said bone discoverer Samuel Belknap III, a University of Maine researcher in the Department of Anthropology and Climate Change Institute.

Belknap didn’t set out to find the oldest dog in the New World. That was just a lucky fluke he discovered when examining someone’s fossilized waste. (Yum!)

“I started out trying to understand human diet in southwest Texas. It so happens that this person, who lived 9,400 years ago, was eating dog,” Belknap said in a press release.

He surmises that dogs were eaten in times of desperation or celebration, according to an interesting article in Discovery. If you want to know more, check it out. It’s worth a little visit if you’re interested in dog history.

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