Bronze-Age Dogs and Humans Both Ate High-Carb Diets

Chronicle / Alamy Stock Photo

Have you ever wondered what the life of ancient dogs was like—what they ate, what they did, who took care of them? A recent (and fascinating) study of Bronze Age proto-farmers and their dogs offers some answers, and another way of understanding canine dietary requirements as well. Spoiler alert: “paleo” doesn’t seem to have been the universal standard.

By the Bronze Age (roughly 4,000 to 5,000 years ago), dogs were firmly in the human camp, having made the big evolutionary leap from wolf to domesticated canine thousands of years earlier. This was also a time during which many groups of humans were shifting from being nomadic hunters and gatherers to a more settled agrarian existence. The dogs living with agro-pastoral families most likely had jobs involving livestock herding, guarding and drayage, or hauling.

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