Animals for the gods - Page 3

A predynastic zoo?

Closer examination of the bones provided Wim and Veerle with more evidence for their hypothesis. “Bones with healed fractures occur in some of the animals we looked at, such as a baby hippopotamus, a jungle cat and a hartebeest (an antelope species); the baboons even had several broken fingers and toes, something which may have happened during their capture or their stay in captivity. Since these fractures had time to heal the animals must have been held in captivity for weeks before they were sacrificed.”

“The hartebeest teeth showed signs of abnormal wear that we also see in animals kept in a modern-day zoo. The abnormal wear is due to the artificial diet, which is not the same as it would be in the wild. We even found fish remains in the stomach of one of the elephants! All this indicates that the animals were kept by people for an extended period of time.”

These and other conclusions help Wim and Veerle sketch a picture of what things were like in Hierakonpolis more than 5000 years ago. And the site is not just a dream for archaeozoologists; the abundance of material is enough to whet any scientist's appetite.

“The environment we are working in here is most definitely interdisciplinary”, Wim tells us.“We conduct our analyses in close cooperation with archaeologists and specialists in palaeobotany (editor: study of plant fossils), geology, anthropology, and so on”. “This makes our research very fascinating”, says Veerle in agreement. “Everything is a jigsaw puzzle and, with the help of our colleagues, we put all the pieces together to reconstruct the overall picture!”