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them three dog burials dating to about 6500 BCE from a long-occupied hunter-gatherer site at Koster, on the Illinois River in the Midwest, each deposited in a shallow pit apparently without much ceremony. The densest concentration of dog burials comes from archaeological sites in the Green River Valley of Kentucky, where at least 111 interments have come from 11 shell mounds, 28 of them with humans. There are also major concentrations in the central Tennessee River Valley in Alabama.
    We know of canine ritual roles from carefully preserved oral traditions collected by anthropologists and others. The best known are those of the Cherokee of the southeastern United States, sometimes known as the Dog Tribe. The Cherokee’s sacred dog restored order and harmony in the face of chaos. It rebalanced humans with the forces of their world. The same animal created a path to the spirit world, acted as a judge of ethical behavior, and ensured that rituals were carried out properly. Above all, dogs protected humanity and guided it on its wayto the Underworld, which gave dogs a profound association with death and the West, the realm of the dead and the night sky.
    The notion of restoring order and balance may well have been the reason for ancient dog burials in many societies. Sacrificing a dog to act as judge and to guide a deceased individual who had committed some form of ritual transgression might have restored spiritual balance to a community. To place a dog at the head or at the face of the deceased, where the soul left the body, would symbolize how dogs acted as ritual leaders. The Cherokee sometimes buried dogs with deceased shamans, perhaps to guide these especially powerful souls away from the realms of the living.
    We’ve lived in close association with dogs for some fifteen thousand years, a relationship that began among hunters facing the challenges of a rapidly warming world. From the beginning, the close ties between dogs and people may well have forged even closer spiritual associations that were to endure in changing forms for thousands of years. Dogs and humans became partners in daily life long before widespread droughts and a variety of other compelling factors turned hunting bands in southwestern Asia, and soon afterward elsewhere, into farmers and herders about twelve thousand years ago. And it was then that the relationship between people and animals changed history dramatically as new domesticated animals assumed dominant roles in human lives.

The Farming Revolution
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    CHAPTER 4

    Down on the First Farms
    Hallan Çemi, eastern Turkey, c. 10,000 BCE . The village has remained at the same location for many generations. Circular huts squat around an open space, crowded in by hillsides covered with oak forest. Beyond the settlement, the forest gives way to more open woodland that extends to the Tigris River in the distance. Small wooden pens stand among the dwellings, where a few young sows and their piglets lie in the sun. Strips of drying deer and gazelle meat hang from nearby racks next to wicker storage bins filled with last year’s acorns and pistachios. Two hunters return home, carrying the carcass of a wild boar suspended from a pole between their shoulders. A third hefts a bound and squealing female piglet, which he releases into a pen to join a sow and her young. The men quickly dismember the boar, adding strips of flesh to the drying racks and setting aside the head and neck for the evening meal.
    Drought and Domestication
    Twelve thousand years ago, a profound revolution in human life began in Southwest Asia, during a time of dramatic climatic change. For millennia, small bands of hunters and foragers had dwelt in an arid world, constantly on the move, their lives anchored to sparse water sources. The landscape was edible to people who knew it intimately—for food, such people had drought-resistant grasses and tubers, deer, rabbits. Above all, they preyed on the gazelle, a small desert