Love You to Death: What A Study of Ancient Goat Teeth Tells Us About Past and Present Animal Care

Figure 1: Location of Tepe Yahya Site (Source: Melina Seabrook)

 

In contemporary society it is easy to see examples of people who love their pet animals.  There are entire industries dedicated to providing the best food, healthcare, and more to pets.  People even go as far as dressing their pets up, carting them around in strollers similar to those one would see for babies, and more.  Modern humans are crazy about their pets.  But at what cost?  Is this a new phenomenon?  An article by Harvard Ph.D. Candidate in Archaeology*, Melina Seabrook, addresses these very questions.

 

Melina Seabrook is an archaeologist who focuses her studies on human-animal relationships.  Much of her work has centered around prehistoric sites in the Middle East and Africa.  In a publication she authored in Sapiens she discussed some of her work at the site of Tepe Yahya, located in modern day Iran (Figure 1).  The site dates to 3,000 to 7500 years ago.  Initially a small village the community grew, urbanized, and flourished due to its presence along a major trade route between Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley.  Urbanization brought about various changes to the community and its members, including the rise of agriculture, animal husbandry, and regionally specific crafts, specifically stone pottery that can be found in various neighboring areas. 

 

The site had been previously excavated several decades before Seabrook began her work in 2021.  She was interested in studying the materials from this site because they had been excavated but not previously analyzed.  She concentrated her efforts on sheep and goat mandibles (lower jaws) recovered from trash piles, suggesting that these animals were used in domestic settings.  Her analyses found that sheep and goats were harvested for specific purposes.  Younger animals (a year or less in age at time of death) were killed and butchered for meat, while older animals (between 2 and 5 years old at death) were used for wool or milk.  

 

Figure 2: Goat mandible with split molar tooth (Source: Melina Seabrook)

 

Her analyses also led to a peculiar trend, however.  She discovered several older goats (age 6 and older) who lived far longer than their livestock counterparts, but they also suffered extremely painful dental diseases.  These goats had missing teeth (lost before they died), very worn down teeth (to their jaw bones), and split molars (Figure 2).  This latter injury was very unusual, and it was ultimately discovered that this was an injury caused by a bridle (i.e., a rope or leather strap placed in the animal’s mouth) used as a means of tethering or leashing them.  It appears that these specific older goats were used for the collection of milk for the family or individual that owned them.  They were not used as livestock.  They would have received preferential treatment compared to livestock in that they would have been fed a healthier diet to ensure they were able to produce milk for a longer period of time.  They would have appeared to have been well cared for, but in exchange the goats suffered debilitating dental diseases that would have brought about extreme pain.

 

Seabrook addresses this situation as being not that different from modern caretaking of “beloved” animals.  While humans may believe they are doing best by their cherished pets or animal companions they may be causing undue harm.  In the case of the ancient goats they suffered as they were taken care of.  This is no different than when people overfeed their pets, leading them to suffer from obesity and obesity related diseases (e.g., diabetes), or when they cart them around in strollers versus allow them to walk and get in appropriate exercise.  Ultimately, Seabrook’s work opens up avenues for greater understandings of how people view animals throughout history and today.   

 

*It is important to note that upon successful completion of her doctoral studies Melina Seabrook will be the second Black woman awarded a PhD in Archaeology at Harvard University.

Bibliography

Seabrook, Melina. "What Ancient Goat Teeth Reveal About Animal Care." Sapiens 12 September 2023. Electronic.

 

 

Bonobo’s Demonstrate Higher Intellectual Abilities Through Communication

        Video of bonobo cognition study conducted by Townrow and Krupenye

 

For many decades scholars believed that nonhuman primates did not have the same level of intelligence of humans.  Nonhuman primates were passed off as wild and simple creatures that were inferior to modern humans.  Long gone are those days and inaccurate ideas, though.  This blog has addressed various aspects of nonhuman primates’ cognitive (or intellectual) abilities, including various ape species’ ability to learn and communicate with sign language and ape species’ ability to combine calls to communicate more than one message.  Today’s blog post adds one more line of evidence that demonstrates nonhuman primates, particularly apes, are smarter than we originally realized.  Apes demonstrate a cognitive ability known as theory of the mind.

 

Theory of the mind is understanding that someone lacks information and moving forward appropriately (e.g., providing them the information or keeping the information secret, depending on the circumstances).  Ultimately, the purpose of theory of the mind is that it acts as a means of cooperation among individuals.  People will share information with each other, particularly those ignorant of a situation, in order to incorporate them into the group and strengthen group bonds. 

 

This ability had been hinted at as being present among various wild ape species from observations by primatologists, but it was unclear if what the primatologists were seeing was indeed cognition or mimicry.  For example, primatologists observed cooperative hunting among chimpanzees wherein one member would alert the group to either a dangerous predator or tasty prey, but it was unclear if others would mimic the actions of the one or if they understood what was being communicated (e.g., running because everyone was running or running because they understood the purpose).  This led two researchers out of John Hopkins University, Luke Townrow and Christopher Krupenye, to test whether or not nonhuman primates did indeed have cognitive abilities linked to the theory of the mind.

 

Townrow and Krupenye conducted their experiment at the Ape Initiative in Iowa.  They selected three male bonobos, Nyota, age 25; Kanzi, age 43; Teco, 13, to engage in their experiment.  They set up their experiment to involve three overturned cups placed on a table, and an experimenter would place a treat under one of the cups.  They then split the experiment into two trials.  In the first trials both a human and a bonobo would watch the experimenter place the treat under the cup.  The human would have to retrieve the treat to give to the bonobo.  This was done easily since the human watched where the treat was placed and could quickly retrieve it.  In the second trials deception was introduced.  This time only the bonobo saw where the treat was placed (as a barrier was placed in front of the human).  The bonobo would point to the cup and the human would wait 10 seconds, perusing the three cups to figure out which one had the treat.  As this trial was repeated the bonobo would point more quickly to the cup with the hidden treat, recognizing the human’s ignorance to where the treat was placed.  A video of the experiment is provided above.

 

The researchers concluded that the results provide definitive evidence of ape species’ ability to understand different perspectives from their own (i.e., another individual does not know something or understands the situation differently).  This further supports the previous observations among wild ape species, which means that cooperation among wild apes is not based on imitation but cooperation.  This study demonstrates that the cognitive ability of theory of the mind must have been present within the common human-ape ancestor, and it also shows that language is not required for the existence of this cognitive ability.  Ultimately, this revolutionizing our ideas and understandings of apes and humans, particularly related to intelligence.

 

Works Cited

Bassi, Margherita. "When Bonobos Know What You Don’t, They’ll Tell You. It’s a Sign of a Cognitive Ability Called ‘Theory of Mind’." Smithsonian Magazine 5 February 2025. Electronic.

Nield, David. "Bonobos Know Something You Don't Know, And Are Willing to Tell For a Price." Science Alert 7 February 2025. Electronic.

Townrow, Luke A. and Krupenye, Christopher. "Bonobos point more for ignorant than knowledgeable social partners." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2025): 6. Electronic.