Archaeologists have discovered a dog skeleton alongside a bone dagger at the bottom of a Swedish swamp. The ruins are thought to be 5,000 years old and may be from mysterious Stone Age rituals.
This unique dog burial was discovered during construction of a high-speed railway in the village of Gerstaberg, about 35 kilometers southwest of Stockholm. Experts from the Swedish group Arkeologerna (archaeologists) announced the discovery in a statement and blog post on Monday (December 15).
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But the dog’s skeleton and nearby dagger surprised archaeologists.
“It is extremely rare to find an intact dog from this period, but the fact that it was buried with a bone dagger is almost unique,” Linus Hagberg, project manager at Archeologerna, said in a translated statement.
The exact breed of the dog is not yet known, but it was described as a large, powerful male, approximately 20 inches (52 centimeters) tall, between 3 and 6 years old. The dog was placed in a leather bag weighted with stones and submerged to a depth of about 5 feet (1.5 meters).
“It is a known phenomenon that dogs were used for ritual acts during this period,” Hagberg said.
Archaeologists found a well-preserved 10-inch (25 centimeter) dagger made from elk and red deer bone right next to the dog’s skeleton. According to Archeologerna’s blog post, “daggers of this type should be considered symbolic objects,” and other examples have been found in Stone Age Sweden at wet, boggy sites.
According to the blog post, the dog and dagger appear to have been deposited in the lake at the same time, suggesting that ancient fishermen who lived in the area 5,000 years ago buried the dog and dagger in some kind of ritual.
Hagberg said additional work will be done on the remains, including carbon dating and DNA analysis, to confirm the age of the find and learn more about the dog and its owner.
“For example, we can tell when the dog lived, how old he was, what he ate,” Hagberg says. “A dog’s life history can tell us more about how the people who owned the dog lived and what they ate.”
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