The Book of History (Vol. 1 of 18): A History of All Nations from the Earliest Times to the PresentVarious
History
The Book of History (Vol. 1 of 18): A History of All Nations from the Earliest Times to the Present
Various
World history
We have no certain proofs that Palæolithic Man possessed the dog as a
domestic animal. In the Somme valley, at Taubach, and at the source
of the Schussen, bones of the domestic dog are absent. And yet, among
Drift fauna in caves remains of dogs have been repeatedly met with,
which have been claimed to be the direct ancestors of the domestic dog.
The dog’s attachment to man may have taken place at different times
in different parts. Man and dog immigrate to South America with the
foreign Northern fauna simultaneously--in a geological sense--during
the Drift. In Australia, man and dog (dingo), as the most intimate
animal beings, are opposed to an animal world that is otherwise
anomalous and, to the Old World, quite antiquated; probably man and dog
also came to Australia together. We know of fossil remains of the dingo
from the Drift, but no reliable finds have yet proved the presence of
man during that period.
[Sidenote: The Dog in the Stone Age]
In the later Stone Age the dog already occurs as the companion of
man wherever it occurs in historic times. In Europe its remains have
been found in the Danish kitchen-middens, in the northern Neolithic
finds, in the lake-dwellings of Switzerland, in innumerable caves of
the Neolithic Period, in the terramare of Upper Italy, etc. It was
partly a comparatively small breed, according to Rütimeyer similar to
the “wachtelhund” (setter) in size and build. Rütimeyer calls this
breed the lake-dwelling dog, after the lake-dwellings, one of the
chief places where it has been found. Like all breeds of animals of
primitive domestication, the dog at this period, according to Nehring,
is small--stunted, as it were. With the progress of civilisation the
dog also grows larger.
[Sidenote: Great Value of the Dog to Man]
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