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(Image credit: Stella Nikolova )
Cut marks on lots of canine skeletons discovered at historical sites in Bulgaria recommend that individuals were consuming pet meat 2,500 years back– and not even if they had no other alternatives.
“Dog meat was not a necessity eaten out of poverty, as these sites are rich in livestock, which was the main source of protein,” Stella Nikolovaa zooarchaeologist at the National Archaeological Institute with Museum of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and author of a research study released in December in the International Journal
of Osteoarchaeologyinformed Live Science. “Evidence shows that dog meat was associated with some tradition involving communal feasting.”
Taking in pet dog meat– a practice often called cynophagy– is thought about taboo in modern European societies, this hasn’t constantly been the case. Historic accounts discuss that the ancient Greeks in some cases consumed canine meat, and historical analysis of canine skeletons from Greece has actually verified those stories.Throughout the Iron Age (5th to very first centuries B.C.), a cultural group referred to as the Thracians lived to the northeast of the Greeks, in what is now Bulgaria. The Greeks and Romans thought about the Thracians to be uncivilized and aggressive, and in the middle of the very first century A.D., Thrace ended up being a province of the Roman EmpireLike the Greeks, the Thracians were stated to have actually taken in pet dog meat.
To check out the concern of whether the Thracians consumed pets, Nikolova analyzed skeletons and formerly released information from 10 Iron Age historical sites spread out throughout Bulgaria. She found that the majority of the pet dogs had medium-sized snouts and medium-to-large withers heights, making them approximately the size of modern-day German shepherds.
The big number of butchery marks on numerous of the bones exposed the canines were not male’s finest pal. “It is most probable they were kept as guard dogs, as the sites have a lot of livestock,” Nikolova stated. “I don’t believe they were viewed as pets in the modern sense.”
At the website of Emporion Pistirosan Iron Age trade center in inland Thrace, archaeologists discovered more than 80,000 animal bones– and pets comprised 2% of the overall. When Nikolova looked carefully at the canine bones from Pistiros, she discovered that almost 20% of them had actually butchery marks made by metal tools. 2 lower pet jaws likewise had actually burned teeth, perhaps the outcome of somebody eliminating hair and fur with fire prior to butchering and preparing the animals.
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A pet skull with cut marks from Emporion Pistiros, Bulgaria. (Image credit: Stella Nikolova)”The highest number of cuts and fragmentation is observed in the parts with the densest muscle tissue — the upper quarter of the hind limbs,” Nikolova stated. “There are also cuts on ribs, although in dogs they would yield little meat.” The cuts Nikolova saw on the canines followed approximately the exact same pattern as those on sheep and livestock at the website, recommending all of the animals were being butchered in a comparable way.
Due to the fact that the Thracians had lots of other animals more generally related to meat intake, such as pigs, birds, fish and wild mammals, Nikolova does not believe the Thracians were eating pets as a last option.
At Pistiros, butchered pet dog bones were found within the disposed of remains of banquets and in basic domestic garbage loads, Nikolova stated, indicating pet dog flesh might have been consumed in various methods. “So, while linked to a certain tradition, it was not confined to that title and was an occasional ‘delicacy,'” she stated.
A number of other Bulgarian historical sites Nikolova examined had proof of cut and burned pet bones, as did websites in Greece and Romania, indicating “we cannot label dog meat consumption as unique to Ancient Thrace, but a somewhat regular practice that was carried out in the 1st millennium BC in the North-East Mediterranean,” Nikolova composed in her research study.
Nikolova prepares to even more examine the function of pets at Pistiros as part of the Corpus Animalium Thracicorum task. She kept in mind that the butchered pets at Pistiros are from the very first part of the Iron Age, however later individuals there started burying undamaged canines, so she intends to figure out whether there was a modification in individuals’s mindset with time that made pet dogs a less appropriate source of food.
Nikolova, S. (2025 ). Canine meat in late Iron Age Bulgaria: requirement, special, or part of a broader intercultural custom? International Journal of Osteoarchaeologyhttps://doi.org/10.1002/oa.70062
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Kristina Killgrove is a personnel author at Live Science with a concentrate on archaeology and paleoanthropology news. Her posts have actually likewise appeared in places such as Forbes, Smithsonian, and Mental Floss. Kristina holds a Ph.D. in biological sociology and an M.A. in classical archaeology from the University of North Carolina, along with a B.A. in Latin from the University of Virginia, and she was previously a university teacher and scientist. She has actually gotten awards from the Society for American Archaeology and the American Anthropological Association for her science composing.
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