With their babyface aesthetic and a certain personable charm, flat-faced dogs are valued companions around the world. A new study suggests it’s a love that dates back to Roman times.
The skull and jawbones of a dog with a clearly crushed snout were unearthed in the ruins of Tralleis (now Aydin in present-day Türkiye) in 2007, thousands of years after it was buried in a tiled tomb at the foot of its human guardian.
Based on an analysis of its remains, the pet-like Tralleis dog was found to resemble a modern French bulldog. His bones also showed no signs of disease or excessive tooth wear, suggesting he was not a working dog but was living a life of luxury when the Romans were just beginning to breed his kind.
“Perhaps it was the best friend and companion of the deceased who probably wrote down the wish for a joint burial in his will.” writes the research team led by Vedat Onar, osteoarchaeologist at Istanbul-Cerrahpaşa University.
The dimensions and structure of the fractured skull and jawbone were compared to those of 54 modern dog breeds and it was inferred that the dog’s likely age was a little over 18 months. The comparison also suggested that the dog was and was likely male most similar to French bulldogs and Pekingese dogs; TThe latter are the prized, silky lap dogs of Chinese imperial families. So it seems that the Romans wanted to have their own kind of companion dog.
Radiocarbon dating estimates suggest that the dog lived more than 2,000 years ago, sometime between 169 B.C Roman Empire.
The find was fortunate in several respects. After the fragile skeleton was unearthed in 2007, it was stashed in a warehouse, but only the skull and jawbone were found when archaeologists searched for it again in 2021.
It is only the second known example of a flat-faced (or brachycephalic) dog to date from Roman times; the other was excavated in the ruins of Pompeii.
Brachycephalic dogs like pugs have become very popular in recent years, despite increasing concerns about them health problems that go far beyond difficult breathing, the result of their shortened snouts and extreme body shapes. Allergies, corneal ulcers, eye diseases and skin fold infections are also common, research shows.
However, depictions of these snub-nosed canines have never been found in classical Roman-era inscriptions, reliefs, or mosaics. Two other classes of dogs, the mesocephalic, with broader snouts and larger nasal cavities that give them excellent sniffing abilities, and the dolichocephalic, with extremely long skulls and long, slender noses that enhance their distance vision, are the typical style of Roman dogs instead.
Although the brachycephalic skulls found so far are fractured and only two are, the researchers suspect that the emergence of flat-faced dogs during the early Roman period likely reflects a dog-breeding practice that began in Roman times and later became more common.
Among domesticated animals, dogs exhibit a much wider variety of skull shapes and sizes than other species that have been selectively bred—which makes it a bit easier Follow these changes through history.
“This dog skull found in Tralleis, which bears important traces of Roman times, can be viewed as a phenomenon of artificial selection, largely introduced by humans and achieved through amplification of desired traits,” Onar and colleagues say write in their published work.
Historical records indicate that the Romans were probably the first civilization to systematically breed dogs and document the resulting appearance, traits, and behavior of their canine companions. They divided dogs into three functional groups: farm dogs, shepherd dogs, and hunting dogs. Small “toy” dogs were perhaps something of a novelty.
“The fact that noble Greeks and Romans in particular preferred noble dog breeds and were able to pay high sums for them stimulated new efforts in dog breeding,” say the researchers add to.
While financial records and fossils can tell a lot about early dog breeding, we can only speculate that the Romans had the same dizzying affection for snub-nosed dogs as many others Dog owners are doing this today.
The research was published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.
