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calgarymicro 4 hours ago [-]
> The people living there continued to bring river mussel shells to the midden for hundreds of years after the dingo’s death.
Hundreds of years? Damn, that's probably well more than most cultures would afford even beloved pets.
defrost 2 hours ago [-]
To the site in general, where the dingo happened to be buried, rather than to the grave of the dingo.
Midden piles of fresh and saltwater shells abound in Australia - unsurprising given some 60K+ years of occupation by cruising along hunter gatherers.
The north west beaches I'm familiar with have many good fishing and marine food gathering spots and the dunes back from the high tide lines often reveal deep strata layers of shells dumped on a near daily basis over long windows of time.
Rivers are similar with remnants of fish traps (blasted by early Europeans for reasons of both navigation and moving the natives along) having waste layers (fish bones, freshwater shells, etc) nearby.
treis 3 hours ago [-]
This seems highly suspect. The paper says there's no evidence of burial and the evidence (mussel shells) that humans were involved with the site at all is thin. That they came from a "feeding ritual" seems to be based on nothing more than speculation.
Seems a lot more plausible that it washed up on a river bank during a flood. Or it died next to a river which subsequently changed course.
dwroberts 17 minutes ago [-]
The paper says the exact opposite of what you’re stating
> At death, he was deliberately buried in a midden initiated either shortly beforehand or contemporaneously with his burial
> The
geomorphological setting and sediment properties
indicate that a grave was cut into a landform positioned up to 2 m higher than the surrounding scroll
plains. [..]
The dingo was found in an articulated context
below this surface, indicating the presence of a
burial cut
Hundreds of years? Damn, that's probably well more than most cultures would afford even beloved pets.
Midden piles of fresh and saltwater shells abound in Australia - unsurprising given some 60K+ years of occupation by cruising along hunter gatherers.
The north west beaches I'm familiar with have many good fishing and marine food gathering spots and the dunes back from the high tide lines often reveal deep strata layers of shells dumped on a near daily basis over long windows of time.
Rivers are similar with remnants of fish traps (blasted by early Europeans for reasons of both navigation and moving the natives along) having waste layers (fish bones, freshwater shells, etc) nearby.
Seems a lot more plausible that it washed up on a river bank during a flood. Or it died next to a river which subsequently changed course.
> At death, he was deliberately buried in a midden initiated either shortly beforehand or contemporaneously with his burial
> The geomorphological setting and sediment properties indicate that a grave was cut into a landform positioned up to 2 m higher than the surrounding scroll plains. [..] The dingo was found in an articulated context below this surface, indicating the presence of a burial cut