The Dogs We Buried: What Animal Graves Reveal About Human Civilization

Q: When did humans first start burying dogs?

The earliest known dog burials date to approximately 12,000 years ago in Natufian sites in the Levant, before the development of agriculture or permanent settlements.

I expected to learn about tools, monuments, and kings. But what stopped me in my tracks was a buried dog.

I spent years reading about ancient civilizations. The usual markers. Agriculture. Writing. Cities. Bronze. Iron. The things textbooks use to separate "civilization" from everything before it.

Then I came across a photograph from a Natufian site in the Levant. About 12,000 years old. A grave. Not a human grave. A dog grave.

The dog was curled on its side. A human hand rested on its shoulder. They were buried together.

Ancient dog burial archaeological site showing skeletal remains of canine buried with care alongside human hand resting on shoulder revealing emotional bonds spiritual beliefs and companion relationships in prehistoric Natufian settlements 12000 years ago before agriculture and cities existed

"They buried dogs before they built cities. That tells me something."

That image stayed with me longer than any pyramid or temple photograph ever did.

Because it raised a question I had never thought to ask: why does someone bury an animal?

Not discard. Not eat. Bury. With care. With ritual.

The answer to that question changed how I understand what civilization actually is.

The First Burials Were Not Human

I always assumed burial was something humans invented for themselves. A way to honor the dead. To mark grief. To create memory.

But the archaeological record shows something stranger.

Some of the earliest deliberate burials we have found are animals. Dogs, mostly. But also foxes, gazelles, and other creatures that lived alongside early human communities.

At Ain Mallaha in Israel, archaeologists found a woman buried with a puppy. Her hand was placed on the dog's body in what looks unmistakably like an embrace.

This was 12,000 years ago. Before agriculture. Before permanent settlements. Before any of the things we associate with "civilization."

The Natufians were hunter-gatherers. They moved seasonally. They had no cities, no writing, no monumental architecture. But they buried dogs.

What does that mean?

At first, I thought maybe it was practical. Maybe dogs were valuable hunting partners. Maybe burying them honored their utility.

But then I kept finding examples that did not fit that explanation.

In Siberia, at a site called Ust'-Polui, archaeologists found dozens of dog burials dating back 2,000 years. Some of the dogs were old. Arthritic. No longer useful for work. But they were buried with the same care as younger, healthier animals.

In China, at Jiahu, dogs were buried alongside humans as early as 9,000 years ago. In sub-Saharan Africa, rock art from the Sahara depicts dogs with collars and leashes dating back 5,000 years, and though organic remains rarely survive in tropical climates, the visual record shows dogs were integrated into human communities across vastly different environments.

That suggests something beyond utility. That suggests attachment.

Burial is not efficient. It takes time. It takes effort. You have to dig. You have to transport the body. You have to position it deliberately.

Nobody does that for something they do not care about.

Which means these people cared. They grieved. They felt loss.

And that emotional capacity existed long before cities, temples, or written law. This pattern appears across cultures in how early societies organized daily life and community bonds.

Were These Just Practical Disposal Sites?

Not all archaeologists agree that burial indicates emotional bonds.

Some argue that placing animal bodies in pits could have been practical waste management. Keep decomposing carcasses away from living spaces. Reduce disease risk. Nothing more.

Others suggest that positioning and grave goods might reflect ritual requirements rather than personal affection. Following cultural scripts about proper disposal, not expressing individual grief.

These are fair objections.

But even if we accept the most skeptical interpretation, the form of burial still matters. The effort invested. The care taken in positioning. The inclusion of objects that had value.

Practical disposal does not require digging deep graves. It does not require placing the body in specific orientations. It does not require sacrificing usable tools or food.

The archaeological evidence consistently shows more effort than pure practicality demands. And that excess effort is what requires explanation.

Dogs in the Economy of Early Settlements

Here is where I started seeing dogs differently.

They were not pets in the modern sense. They were workers. Partners. Essential infrastructure for survival.

Dogs herded livestock. They guarded settlements. They assisted in hunting. They warned of predators. They even pulled sleds and carried packs in northern climates.

In early agricultural societies, dogs were economic assets. You invested resources in feeding them because they returned value.

But that creates a problem for my earlier interpretation.

If dogs were just tools, why bury them? You do not bury broken plows. You do not conduct funerals for worn-out grinding stones.

Yet people buried dogs. Which means dogs occupied a category between tool and kin.

This ambiguity shows up in how dogs were treated.

Some dog burials include grave goods. Food. Tools. Personal items. The same things buried with humans.

Other dog remains are found discarded in refuse pits. No ceremony. No care.

The difference seems to be relationship.

Working dogs that lived closely with families were buried. Stray dogs or ones used only for specific tasks were not.

What fascinated me was how this mirrored human social structures.

In early settlements, not all humans received elaborate burials either. Status mattered. Kinship mattered. Contribution mattered.

Dogs that were integrated into households were treated like household members. Dogs that remained outside that social circle were not.

This tells me something important about how early people understood community. It was not strictly species-based. It was relational.

If you shared space, labor, and daily life, you earned ritual recognition when you died. Regardless of whether you were human.

Ritual, Sacrifice, and Symbolism

Then I encountered something that complicated the picture further.

Not all dog burials were about companionship. Some were clearly sacrificial.

In ancient Egypt, dogs appeared in tombs alongside their owners. But the positioning was deliberate. Intentional. The dogs were placed as guardians. Protectors for the journey to the afterlife.

Anubis, the jackal-headed god, presided over mummification and the underworld. Dogs were symbolically linked to death, transition, and protection.

This was not about affection. It was about function. Dogs served a role in cosmology.

Similar patterns appear in Mesopotamia. Dogs buried at thresholds. At gates. In foundation deposits under buildings.

These were not beloved pets. They were spiritual technology. Their presence warded off danger. Their sacrifice sanctified space.

In Mesoamerica, the Aztecs buried dogs with human remains because they believed dogs guided souls through the underworld.

Xolotl, the dog-headed god, was the psychopomp. The guide of the dead. Dogs were not companions in life. They were necessary for death.

What struck me about these ritual burials was how they revealed belief systems we can only infer.

Nobody wrote down why they buried dogs at gates. We have no texts explaining Natufian burial customs. We have to reconstruct belief from action.

And action shows that dogs occupied sacred space. They were boundary creatures. Living between human settlements and wilderness. Between life and death.

But I need to be careful here. Burial does not always equal affection. Sometimes it signals fear, control, or obligation rather than love. A dog sacrificed to sanctify a building was not being honored as an individual. It was being used as spiritual material. The care taken in positioning the body reflected the importance of the ritual, not necessarily the value of the animal itself.

That liminal status gave them spiritual power.

When does a burial become a statement of belief rather than an expression of grief?

I am not sure there is a clean line. Maybe every burial is both.

Military and Myth: Canine Authority

Dogs also appear as instruments of power.

The Persians, Romans, and Celts all used war dogs. Large breeds trained to attack. To intimidate. To guard.

These dogs were buried with military honors. Grave goods included weapons, armor, and insignia.

At the Roman outpost of Vindolanda near Hadrian's Wall, archaeologists found dog skeletons positioned alongside military equipment. The deliberate arrangement suggests formal burial practices reserved for soldiers, not livestock.

They were soldiers. Not pets.

In Celtic mythology, war dogs appear alongside heroes. In Norse myth, Garmr guards the gates of Hel. In Greek tradition, Cerberus guards the underworld.

Dogs are consistently associated with boundaries, guardianship, and controlled violence.

This makes sense when you think about what dogs actually did.

They controlled access. They decided who could enter. They defended territory. They enforced hierarchy.

In that sense, dogs were extensions of authority.

Burying war dogs was not sentimentality. It was recognition of service. Of loyalty. Of shared risk.

What bothered me about these military burials was how they mirrored human military graves.

Both emphasized duty over individuality. Both honored sacrifice. Both reinforced the legitimacy of the systems they served.

Dogs that died in war were not mourned as individuals. They were commemorated as symbols of obedience and courage.

That tells me something uncomfortable about how power operates. It absorbs individuals into narratives. Human or otherwise.

Class and Species: Who Gets Buried?

Not all dogs were equal.

Elite burials sometimes included dogs with elaborate grave goods. Collars. Leashes. Bowls. Beds.

These were high-status animals. Companion dogs of wealthy families. Hunting dogs of aristocrats.

Meanwhile, archaeological sites show thousands of dog remains discarded in trash heaps. No burial. No ceremony. Just disposal.

The difference was not species. It was class.

Dogs owned by powerful people received ritual treatment. Dogs owned by poor people, or ownerless strays, did not.

This mirrored how humans were treated.

Elaborate tombs for rulers. Mass graves or no graves for slaves and laborers.

What this reveals is that burial was never just about death. It was about social recognition. About who mattered. About whose loss was acknowledged publicly.

Dogs became proxies for human status. A well-buried dog signaled wealth. Care. Sentiment that only the privileged could afford.

This is explored further in how record-keeping and visibility determined who was remembered.

Poor people loved their dogs too. But love without resources does not leave archaeological traces.

So history remembers the dogs of the rich. And forgets the dogs of the poor.

That bothers me. Because it means our understanding of human-animal relationships is biased toward elite experiences. This same pattern of how record-keeping and visibility determined who was remembered shaped all of history, not just animal burials.

We assume ancient people treated dogs like modern pet owners do. But most ancient people were not elites. Most ancient dogs were not pampered companions.

They were working animals that lived hard lives and died without ceremony.

The buried dogs are exceptions. Not norms.

The Archaeology of Bonding

Modern archaeology has tools that let us ask more precise questions.

Isotope analysis of dog bones reveals diet. If a dog ate the same food as humans, it lived closely with them. If its diet was scraps and refuse, it lived on the margins.

Recent DNA studies have added another layer. Genetic analysis shows that ancient dogs buried with humans often shared closer genetic relationships to modern companion breeds than to working or feral populations. This suggests selective breeding for temperament and social bonds was happening earlier than previously thought.

Grave orientation matters. Dogs buried facing specific directions often align with human burial customs, suggesting shared ritual frameworks.

Burial depth indicates effort. Shallow graves might be expedient. Deep graves required deliberate labor.

Grave goods reveal what people thought dogs needed in death. Food for the journey. Tools for protection. Personal items that connected the dog to its owner.

All of this data accumulates into patterns.

And the pattern shows that human-dog relationships were older, deeper, and more varied than I expected.

Some dogs were treated as family. Others as workers. Still others as spiritual intermediaries.

The relationship was not fixed. It adapted to context.

In hunting societies, dogs were partners. In agricultural societies, they were guards. In urban societies, they became status symbols.

But across all contexts, burial marked the same thing: recognition that a relationship existed worth honoring.

Similar patterns of material culture revealing social structures appear in how daily life and labor organized early communities.

What These Graves Say About Us

I started this expecting to learn about dogs. But I learned about humans instead.

Burying dogs was not rational. It was not efficient. It served no survival function.

But people did it anyway.

That tells me emotion shaped civilization as much as logic did. Maybe more.

We think of civilization as tools, walls, laws, and writing. Systems that organize complexity. Structures that manage scarcity.

And those things matter. They appear in how early communities developed sustainable practices.

But dog burials remind me that civilization is also grief. Loyalty. Memory. Meaning.

The decision to bury a dog says: this creature mattered. This relationship was real. This loss deserves recognition.

That is not survival instinct. That is something else. Something harder to define but impossible to ignore.

Dogs were mirrors. They reflected how we saw ourselves.

When we buried them as companions, we affirmed that love transcended species. When we buried them as guards, we acknowledged that protection mattered. When we sacrificed them ritually, we revealed our cosmology.

Every dog grave is a statement about human values.

And what surprises me most is how early those values appeared.

Before cities. Before temples. Before any of the structures we call civilization, people were already forming bonds that felt significant enough to memorialize.

That capacity did not emerge from agriculture or writing. It was already there.

Before law, before trade, before organized religion, there was the decision to remember. And memory, not technology, may be the true seed of civilization.

Which makes me wonder what else was there. What other aspects of human experience existed before we built monuments to prove it.

Dog graves are rare because most dogs were not buried. Most relationships left no trace.

But the ones that did leave traces show that ancient people cared about things we do not usually associate with survival.

They cared about companionship. About loyalty. About marking loss.

Those are not primitive concerns. They are human concerns. And they shaped how societies organized just as much as food storage or defense ever did. These patterns appear throughout how early communities developed sustainable practices that balanced practical needs with social meaning.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. When did humans first start burying dogs?

ANS: The earliest known dog burials date to approximately 14,200 years ago (Bonn-Oberkassel) and 12,000 years ago (Natufian sites), before agriculture or permanent settlements.

2. Why did ancient people bury dogs?

ANS: Burials suggest emotional bonds, recognition of working partnerships, ritual significance, or spiritual beliefs about dogs guiding souls or protecting against danger. However, burial does not always indicate affection; some were ritual sacrifices.

3. Were all ancient dogs buried?

ANS: No. Most dog remains are found discarded in refuse pits. Burial was selective, often reserved for dogs with close relationships to families or those serving ritual purposes.

4. What do dog burials reveal about ancient societies?

ANS: They reveal emotional capacity, social hierarchies, spiritual beliefs, and the economic roles dogs played in hunting, herding, guarding, and companionship.

5. Did ancient cultures see dogs as sacred?

ANS: Many did. Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Celtic, and Mesoamerican cultures associated dogs with death, the underworld, protection, and spiritual guidance.

6. How do archaeologists study ancient dog burials?

ANS: Through isotope analysis (revealing diet), DNA analysis (showing breeding patterns), grave orientation, burial depth, and presence of grave goods.

7. Were war dogs buried differently?

ANS: Yes. Military dogs often received burials with weapons, armor, or insignia, emphasizing their role as soldiers rather than companions.

8. Did class affect how dogs were treated after death?

ANS: Absolutely. Elite families buried dogs with elaborate grave goods, while dogs of poor families were typically discarded without ceremony, mirroring human social hierarchies.

Sources

📚 Darcy Morey, Dogs: Domestication and the Development of a Social Bond

Comprehensive study of archaeological evidence for human-dog relationships across prehistoric and ancient societies.
Published by Cambridge University Press (2010).
🔗 Cambridge University Press