A 950-year-old dingo burial in Australia reveals clear archaeological evidence of humans ritually "feeding" an animal's grave for centuries, a new study reports.
The symbolic feeding involved river mussels and continued for roughly 500 years, radiocarbon dating showed. This suggests that the people who buried the dingo — namely, ancestors of the Aboriginal Barkindji people, whose traditional lands surround the Darling River in western New South Wales — profoundly valued the animal and passed on this care to subsequent generations, researchers say.
