They are mistrusted by Outback travellers and persecuted by farmers, yet dingoes were once man’s friend, according to evidence suggesting that Aborigines used to bury them elaborately alongside humans.
The Australian native dog has long been maligned as an unpredictable loner, a marauder of livestock and occasional killer of humans. But this was not always the case, according to the research that shows they were probably domesticated thousands of years before Europeans arrived in 1788.
The researchers examined remains at Curracurrang, an archaeological site near Sydney, where radiocarbon dating of dingo bones revealed that they were buried alongside humans at least 2,300 years ago.
The care taken to bury the animals suggests there was a far closer relationship, according to Loukas Koungoulos, the lead researcher. “This reflects the close bond between people and dingoes and their almost human status,” he said.
When Europeans observed Aboriginal societies in the 19th and 20th centuries, they noticed that many took dingo pups from wild dens and raised them as companions, as guard dogs and living “blankets”.
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They returned to the wild to find a mate after reaching about a year old, seemingly never to return.
“Dingo burials reveal aspects of the relationship between Australia’s First Peoples and their dingo companions which had been, until now, obscured,” the study’s authors, from the Australian National University and the University of Western Australia, wrote.
The Australian Museum says that dingoes were taken to Australia, probably by Asian seafarers, at least 4,000 years before Europeans arrived. But since the introduction of sheep to Australia — an easy prey for dingoes — they have been regarded as pests. They are now poisoned and shot.
