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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from how Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff,

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Speaker 1: Lauren bogelbam Here, your dog might not like being on

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Speaker 1: a leash. He loves walks, of course, but could it

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Speaker 1: be his glances are sometimes a touch reproachful. As he

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Speaker 1: gazes at you over the pile of leaves he's snuffling.

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Speaker 1: The look might be saying, I am hurt by your

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Speaker 1: distrust your ancestors. Let my ancestors roam free and now

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Speaker 1: here I a noble beast and chained. If your dog

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Speaker 1: lays that one on you, your best recourse is to

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Speaker 1: show him. The world's oldest known dog art. Ancient humans

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Speaker 1: may have been primitive, but even nine thousand years ago,

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Speaker 1: they seem to have been wise to the ways of

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Speaker 1: the canine. A study published in the Journal of Anthropological

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Speaker 1: Archaeology in November describes recently discovered rock carvings in the

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Speaker 1: northwestern region of the Saudi Arabian Desert. They illustrate prehistoric

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Speaker 1: hunting practices using dogs as assistants. The depicted dogs look

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Speaker 1: much like modern Canaan dogs, with erect years long, feathery

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Speaker 1: tails and short snouts. Each one has a distinctive coat pattern,

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Speaker 1: suggesting the artists knew the dogs personally, and similar to

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Speaker 1: modern dogs. Two are shown tethered to the waste of

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Speaker 1: a human hunter. The engravings were discovered as part of

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Speaker 1: a project led by a research team from the Max

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Speaker 1: Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in partnership

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Speaker 1: with the Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage. Over

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Speaker 1: one thousand, four hundred rock art panels showing almost seven

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Speaker 1: thousand animals ranging from lions and leopards to gazelle and

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Speaker 1: wild donkeys, have been found during the studies three year run,

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Speaker 1: but these dogs might be the most exciting find because

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Speaker 1: they give us clues to when and why dogs were

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Speaker 1: domesticated by humans. It is very difficult to date rock engravings,

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Speaker 1: but the research team estimated these to be around nine

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Speaker 1: thousand years old, making them probably the oldest depictions of

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Speaker 1: human dog interactions ever found. Even if they're overshooting their estimate,

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Speaker 1: the next oldest dog art would be on some Iranian

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Speaker 1: pottery that's about eight thousand years old. These newly found

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Speaker 1: drawings certainly are the oldest to pay of a leashes.

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Speaker 1: Before this find, the oldest art showing restrained dogs was

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Speaker 1: from a five thousand, five hundred year old Egyptian wall painting.

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Speaker 1: Although this rock art gives us a better sense of

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Speaker 1: how humans interacted with dogs during this time, it's possible

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Speaker 1: that dogs were domesticated much earlier, possibly between fifteen thousand

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Speaker 1: and thirty thousand years ago, and the domestication process may

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Speaker 1: have happened more than once. It's not known whether the

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Speaker 1: leashes in these rock art panels are literal or symbolic,

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Speaker 1: but it certainly suggests that these Holocene hunters had a

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Speaker 1: lot of control over their dogs, that some dogs could

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Speaker 1: have been more valuable than others and therefore kept closer,

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Speaker 1: and that the people likely bred and trained these prehistoric pooches.

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Speaker 1: Today's episode was written by Jesselyn Shields and produced by

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Speaker 1: Tristan McNeil. For more on this and lots of other

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Speaker 1: dog on fascinating topics, visit our home planet, how stuff

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Speaker 1: works dot com