Different Human–Dog Interactions in Early Agricultural Societies of China, Revealed by Coprolite

Yunan Zhang,Guoping Sun,Xiaohong Wu,Xiaoyan Yang,Dong Zhang

doi:10.3389/feart.2020.633724

Abstract

Dogs served in a variety of capacities in prehistory. After their domestication in Paleolithic hunter-gatherer societies, the emergence of agriculture shifted their partnerships with people. However, the associations between dogs and early farmers are not readily visible in the archaeological record. In the present study, dog coprolites, uncovered from two groups of early agricultural societies in China during the Neolithic Age, the early rice agricultural site of Tianluoshan in the lower Yangtze River, and three early millet-rice mixed agricultural sites of Shuangdun, Yuhuicun, and Houtieying along the middle Huai River, were examined based on the comparisons of lipid and palynological results to reveal different relationships of dogs and humans. The Tianluoshan dogs showed a plant-dominated diet with higher contents of plant sterols and fatty alcohols with longer chain lengths. Dogs may have lived on foraging or been provisioned with refuse for the cleanness purpose. On the contrary, dogs from the sites of Shuangdun, Yuhuicun, and Houtieying showed a meat-dominated diet with higher proportions of animal sterols and short-chain fatty alcohols. It most probably referred to their assistance in hunting and thus being provisioned with meat. Furthermore, activity areas of the dogs also reflect different deployment strategies and agricultural systems, evidenced by pollen spectra from the coprolites. Dogs at Tianluoshan mostly appeared in the rice field area, in correspondence with the labor-consuming rice cultivation as the main targeted resource, showing their participation in daily agricultural activities. On the other hand, high concentrations of pollen from forest and grassland revealed that hunting dogs played a regular role in the early millet-rice mixed farming societies, probably related to the importance of hunting activities in the daily subsistence.

Highlights

As the first domestic animal, current archaeological and genetic evidence suggest that dogs emerged during the Late Pleistocene (Germonpré et al, 2009, Germonpre et al, 2012; Ovodov et al, 2011; Larson et al, 2012)
Within the thirty-one coprolites analyzed from Tianluoshan, twenty-six show higher proportions of plant sterol, ranging from 53.13% to 96.63%, and less animal sterol, ranging from 3.37% to 46.85%
Lipid and pollen data from dog coprolites uncovered from two groups of sites, i.e., Tianluoshan and Shuangdun, Yuhuicun, and Houtieying, were compared to reveal their different dietary components and associated human–dog relationships

Summary

Introduction

As the first domestic animal, current archaeological and genetic evidence suggest that dogs emerged during the Late Pleistocene (Germonpré et al, 2009, Germonpre et al, 2012; Ovodov et al, 2011; Larson et al, 2012). It has been assumed that the different functions of dogs in societies are correlated with variations in human subsistence and the reliance on resource categories (Lupo, 2019). It raises the questions of whether dogs continued helping with hunting among agricultural people living in permanent villages, when hunting success was not a crucial part for subsistence, and whether dogs were treated variably in different agricultural systems

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion