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thatisnotmyknob t1_j24y4og wrote

"In addition, the bones from all three showed cut marks indicating that they had been butchered and eaten by colonists, said Michael Lavin, director of collections at Jamestown Rediscovery. Jamestown’s settlers ran out of food in the winter of 1609-1610 — what was known as the “starving time” — and in desperation ate dogs, rodents, snakes and boots. There is also one account of cannibalism."

Well wasn't expecting that they ate the dogs.

"According to the European colonial records, dogs up and down the Eastern seaboard … were reported to howl and not to bark, giving rise to the term, ‘barkless dogs,’” he wrote.

In two cases, dogs were found buried along with a severed right human forearm. The reason is a mystery. Blick speculated that the arm may have been a war trophy, buried with the dog “to symbolically keep the enemy at bay in the afterlife"

Pretty metal.

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WhiteHairedWidow t1_j25cge8 wrote

The reason is a mystery. Blick speculated that the arm may have been a war trophy, buried with the dog “to symbolically keep the enemy at bay in the afterlife”

I love this haha I just got a book called “Motel of the Mysteries” and its about a civilization 2000 years in the future finding archeological artifacts from our time and they try to explain all of these. An example is looking at the highway system and claiming it was used for extraterrestrial landing.

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SpaceTabs t1_j25vmwd wrote

That was version 1.0 of Jamestown, before the massacre in 1622.

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weedful_things t1_j2bmhej wrote

My wife and I visited Jamestown a few months ago. My cousin works there. She didn't tell us about the cannibalism.

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Dwayla t1_j252nh5 wrote

So we stole their land and ate their dogs.

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CharismaticCrone t1_j27ffyv wrote

We did, though they ate their dogs too, as per the article. Not to be outdone, we ate each other at Jamestown.

Lovely folk, our ancestors.

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irkli OP t1_j26k8np wrote

Yeah and Jamestown bought Irish women as slaves. Then the Dutch brought in kidnapped black folk. Fkn white euros were ruthless monsters all around.

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JohnChimpo7 t1_j27czw2 wrote

Doesn’t really seem like the Irish slaves are monsters in this scenario, so not sure what you mean by “all around”

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donglord666 t1_j28ux7c wrote

The article says they also ate their dogs, as part of a ritual to a war god.

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HappilyhiketheHump t1_j25kl2d wrote

Yes you did. Give all your personal possessions and accumulated wealth to the government for redistribution and report for immediate deportation.

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mynameisalso t1_j26qyph wrote

Why do conservatives struggle with nuance?

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uncleawesome t1_j26ybnt wrote

They’ve been taught there are only two sides of things. All right or all wrong.

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HappilyhiketheHump t1_j28qmfg wrote

Why don’t liberals have fun in their lives? See, I can interject silly political notions into a non political comment section too. SMH

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Mastr_Blastr t1_j24w2ex wrote

>400 yrs old

>ancient

Pick one.

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no_cal_woolgrower t1_j24zra6 wrote

You should read the article before commenting.

"Better to Remain Silent and Be Thought a Fool than to Speak and Remove All Doubt"

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[deleted] t1_j252vjv wrote

[deleted]

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shewy92 t1_j2e6den wrote

You can get around paywalls. Just hit Esc or the X right after it initially loads to stop it from loading in the paywall. It usually works.

> They were dogs that howled but didn’t bark. They resembled foxes, or wolves. And they had been the companions of Native Americans for thousands of years, after their ancestors arrived with early migrants from Asia. > > Now, DNA that appears to be from descendants of these long-vanished canines has turned up at the Jamestown colonial site in Virginia, where starving settlers may have eaten them, experts at Jamestown and the University of Iowa said this month. > > It is the first proof that Indigenous dogs were at Jamestown, and is a link to the bones of more than 100 that were found at a Native American site nearby in the 1970s and ’80s. > > “It is really exciting,” said Leah Stricker, curator at Preservation Virginia’s Jamestown Rediscovery project. > > “Many of the discoveries … made on this site support the historical record, but in the case of artifacts like these dog bones, the archaeological material is rewriting history,” she said in an email. > > It’s “also exciting … that the DNA survives in some of these bones,” which are 400 years old, she said. “This opens up new and expanded avenues of research.” > > Dogs are believed to have come to North America with early migrants from Northeast Asia about 14,000 years ago, experts say. > > “The first people to enter the Americas likely did so with their dogs,” Angela Perri, an archaeologist at Texas A&M University, wrote with colleagues last year in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “Where people went, dogs went.” > > They were used for hunting, for warmth, for protection, as draft animals and perhaps as companions in the afterlife. The extinct Salish Wool hound of the Pacific Northwest was bred for its white fur, which was cut and woven for blankets. > > In some instances, native dogs were eaten. The Northern Iroquois had a feast of the dogs dedicated to their war god in which dog meat was ritually eaten, the late historian Jeffrey P. Blick has written. Other groups practiced dog sacrifice. > > Native dogs were soon replaced by European dogs, and almost no genetic trace of the Indigenous animals remains in today’s dogs, Perri said in an interview. > > In 1607, Jamestown became the first permanent English settlement in what would become the United States. It is located on the James River in southeastern Virginia, 160 miles south of Washington. > > Little is known for certain about local Indigenous dogs, aside from fleeting references in historic accounts. > > “What comes down to us today regarding the Native American domestic dog in Virginia are bits and pieces that must be stitched together” from sources from 1585 to 1705, Blick wrote in a paper in 2000. > > The British observer William Strachey, for example, reported in 1612: “The doggs of the Country are like their woulves, and cannot barke but howle.” Others described native dogs as looking like foxes, “blacke and sharp nosed.” > > The 19th-century artist and adventurer George Catlin later wrote: “The dog, amongst all Indian tribes, is more esteemed and more valued than amongst any part of the civilized world. … The Indian … keeps him closer company, and draws him near to his heart.” > > Few images of local native dogs survive. One animal appears in the background of a painting of an Indian village in what is now northeastern North Carolina by the English artist John White, dating to about 1585. > > The painting shows a dog about the size of a fox, with short hair, a long nose and a tail that curls up. > > The Jamestown discovery came by accident, said Ariane Thomas, a PhD candidate in anthropology who specializes in anthropological genetics and ancient DNA at the University of Iowa. > > She had been researching colonial dogs of European origin to see when they replaced Indigenous dogs. She also wanted to see if there was a link between ancient European and modern dogs. > > “Is a bloodhound from 1625 the genetic ancestor of today’s bloodhounds in North America?” she said. > > But data on early European dogs is also scarce. > > She said she learned that Jamestown Rediscovery had colonial dog bone fragments in its large artifact collection. She and associate professor of anthropology Matthew E. Hill Jr. visited Jamestown in July. > > They focused on teeth from seven dogs, and drilled into them to see if they could collect material that would yield DNA. No viable DNA existed in four of the dogs, Stricker, of Jamestown, said. > > But DNA was acquired from the other three, and analysis showed they were likely Indigenous rather than European. > > In addition, the bones from all three showed cut marks indicating that they had been butchered and eaten by colonists, said Michael Lavin, director of collections at Jamestown Rediscovery. > > Jamestown’s settlers ran out of food in the winter of 1609-1610 — what was known as the “starving time” — and in desperation ate dogs, rodents, snakes and boots. There is also one account of cannibalism. > > It is not known how or why the colonists acquired the native dogs, Lavin said. > > One of the native dogs was genetically linked to a dog that was found buried with many others at the site of an ancient Indian settlement across the James River, about 20 miles upstream from Jamestown, near Hopewell, Va., Thomas, of the University of Iowa, said. > > “That’s new news,” Lavin said. > > Called Weyanoke Old Town, the site dates back several thousand years, Blick wrote. > > In the 1970s and ’80s, archaeologists discovered the remains of 117 dogs there. It is believed to be the largest collection of prehistoric dogs from a single site in North America, and perhaps in the Western Hemisphere, according to Blick. > > “According to the European colonial records, dogs up and down the Eastern seaboard … were reported to howl and not to bark, giving rise to the term, ‘barkless dogs,’” he wrote. > > In two cases, dogs were found buried along with a severed right human forearm. > > The reason is a mystery. Blick speculated that the arm may have been a war trophy, buried with the dog “to symbolically keep the enemy at bay in the afterlife.” > > Hill, of the University of Iowa, said that for Native Americans, dogs “always had this kind of spiritual importance and power.” > > “They quite literally have a foot in the human world and in the natural world, and they go back and forth,” he said. > > In another case at Weyanoke, a dog was buried with an adult woman who was found in the fetal position with the animal’s remains curled up over her feet. > > “In life, she may have used the dog to keep her feet warm during chilly weather,” Blick wrote. “And thus her fellow villagers felt obliged to provide her this comfort on her journey to the afterlife

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irkli OP t1_j26k2cp wrote

For DNA, it is old. But yeah, sloppy seems to be the standard.

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Fuzzyphilosopher t1_j274c96 wrote

Americans tend to be historically challenged so to most the people I know 400 years ago is 'ancient.' Have to write for your audience I guess. A friend had his editor review what he wrote and was told to dumb it down to a 5th grade reading level. Then there's the old saw that compares years and miles/Kms in other places vs the US.

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mediocritia t1_j29eabj wrote

The dogs went extinct 400 years ago. They existed prior to that. The breed itself is ancient, not the bones.

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herpderpedian t1_j26f2pa wrote

Very interesting. I never knew about native dogs. Thanks for posting.

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scummy_shower_stall t1_j28jsj5 wrote

The tribes of the Pacific Northwest had a little white dog that they would use the shed hair from to weave warm clothes. White settlers put a permanent end to that. Woops, the article did mention the dog!

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TheGrandExquisitor t1_j2b1cyv wrote

Dogs were pretty much the only domesticated animal, except for the turkey, which was relegated to Puebloan people. Well, once you get into Mexico they show up, but not so much north of what eventually became the border.

Dogs are pretty much common to all Native American societies though. Use varied. From the Salish Wool Dog, to the dogs used by the Plains tribes which were used to pull loads. In fact, the Plains groups were considered excellent dog breeders. And when horses showed up, they adapted that technology very quickly. Really savvy animal breeders and trainers. Their skill was widely admired.

In fact, I don't think there are any people who don't traditionally have dogs. Maybe a few outliers, but dogs were the first animals we domesticated and we have had them with us for 40,000 years.

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herpderpedian t1_j2b4c7r wrote

Interesting! I've heard of Xoloitzcuintlis before but I never connected dogs with Native Americans in the US region for some reason.

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