I'm looking at behaviour around the domestication of the dog, and although it's interesting to look into wolf behaviours and how they evolved, it would also be interesting to see how human behaviour adapted to the dog.
I think there is evidence about worship of cats in ancient Egypt, but you seem only interested in canidae..?
Hi Silvia, cat genetic domestication technically didn't start until 100-300 AD although the Egyptians did worship them! Bubastis was the city of Bastet where celebrations were held and thousands of cats mummified.
I'm interested in canines because I'm focusing on pre-history and origins of domestication but trying to think slightly out of the box for evidence other than morphological and genetic indication of domestication.
I've never seen any evidence that dogs were worshiped after their domestication. However, prior to domestication, canines were occasionally worshiped in indigenous African religions. So I'd propose that domestication brought with it the un-divinization (if that's a word!) of canines.
According to Jimmy Dunn, editor of Tour Egypt Monthly: The Magazine of Egyptian Travel and History: "Anubis is often referred to as the jackal headed god, but Egyptians seem to have identified other dogs with this god, and at times domestic dogs were buried as sacred animals in the Anubieion catacombs at Saqqara."
http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/dogs.htm
http://www.touregypt.net/magazine/archive.htm
For this topic you might be interested in the rich iconography
of animals shown in relief on the T-columns at Göbekli Tepe (SE-Anatolia).
These representations are already on the long trajectory (leading into) towards animal domestication in the Near East, and which begins only a bit later. Göbekli is a good starting point for all Early Neolithic cognitive studies.
Bernhard Paul Weninger Gobekli Tepe is actually one of the sites I have been focusing my research on, specifically the symbolism identified there. For my original dissertation, I had been focusing on the symbolism of Anatolia and what it meant for human advancement. Truly a fantastic era and region!
For the Early Neolithic in Central Europe (Linearbandkeramik) there are documented clay figurines e.g. of pigs, bovids and other cattle.
Is rockart or a figurine a kind of whorship? I am in doubt. I don't know whorship but appreciation might have been expressed by burials, as for dogs 14-12ka (Morey, D. F. Burying key evidence: the social bond between dogs and people. Journal of Archaeological Science 33, 158–175, 2006) or burials 8ka there are several publications or early sacrifices of dogs (De Grossi Mazzorini, J. & Minniti, C. Dog sacrifice in the Ancient World: A Ritual Passage? in Dogs and People in Social, Working, Economic or Symbolic Interaction. - Proceedings of the 9th Conference of the International Council of Archaeozoology, Durham, August 2002 (eds. Snyder, L. M. & Moore, E. A.) 62–66, Oxbow Books, 2006), or cat burials (Vigne, J.-D., Guilaine, J., Debue, K., Haye, L. & Gérard, P. Early Taming of the Cat in Cyprus. Science 304, 259–259, 2004) or horse burial (Article Domestication and early history of the horse
).Best regards,
Kurt Raisch
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