The First Beloved Dog

The life and death of a puppy in the Ice Age

The Bonn-Oberkassel grave was discovered in 1914 near Bonn, Germany, during quarry work. Dated to about 14,000 years ago, during the last Ice Age, the grave contained the remains of a man, a woman, quite likely mates, along with a wolf-like canine pup. And yet the canine was not a wolf—it was a dog. The earliest confirmed domesticated dog yet found.

The puppy was only seven months old when it died. Analysis of its bones showed that for at least ten weeks of its short life it had suffered from severe canine distemper, a viral infection that causes fever, vomiting, seizures, and eventually death. Such an illness would have left the puppy unable to survive without sustained human care, which means it was nursed through weeks of sickness before dying and being buried along with the man and the woman. Were they the ones who cared for the dog? We don’t know, but it’s strongly suggested by the simple fact that the puppy was buried with them.

The Bonn-Oberkassel grave is an important find because it gives us the earliest solid evidence that humans weren’t just keeping dogs for work, but caring for them as companions. The burial of this puppy alongside people hints that by this time in our past, our relationship with dogs had moved beyond a utilitarian hunting partnership to become a bond of friendship, moral duty, and love.

Archaeology usually tells us about tools, weapons, survival. The Bonn-Oberkassel puppy tells a story off the beaten path: a tale of tenderness in the midst of hardship. In these cold, ancient bones, science has given us a surprising glimpse of people in the Ice Age pausing in their hard lives to feed and protect a sick puppy. They buried it with them, not apart, suggesting that in their story of who we are, the dog was included.

In my new novel Wolf, Moon, Dog (out Sept 30 from Random House Canada) I wanted to explore that long trail of pawprints trotting alongside footprints, tracing our bond with dogs from the first time we shared a fire with another species to the present day. To imagine what it has meant, and what it still means, for human and dog to walk together.