Long before pigeons became synonymous with crowding city sidewalks and eating half-eaten sandwiches out of the trash, humans may have been managing — and even ritualistically consuming — them.
A new study examining thousands-of-years-old pigeon remains from a Late Bronze Age settlement suggests the humble rock pigeon may have played a far more important role in ancient human life than previously believed.
Published in the journal Antiquity, the research revisited bird bones uncovered at Hala Sultan Tekke, a coastal settlement on Cyprus dating back roughly 3,000 years. What researchers found suggests that pigeons were not simply scavenging around human homes, but were instead living alongside people in semi-domesticated relationships.
The Mysterious History of the Common Pigeon
Rock doves — better known today as the common pigeon — have spent millennia living alongside people. Around the world, people have historically raised them for meat, kept them as pets, and used their droppings as fertilizer. They have also carried symbolic meaning, appearing in religious texts and symbolizing gods and goddesses across cultures.
Yet despite their deep relationship with humans, experts still know quite little about exactly when this relationship began.
“Probably among the earliest birds to be brought into the domestic sphere, rock doves likely took the commensal pathway to domestication, living alongside and scavenging from human communities for many generations. However, the when, where and how of C. livia domestication is yet unknown,” said the authors in the study.
The idea that humans and pigeons go way back is nothing new. Previous discoveries of pigeon bones in caves in Gibraltar, associated with both Neanderthals and early modern humans, suggest people may have been exploiting pigeons as far back as 67,000 years ago. But this new study of the Cyprus site offered some of the clearest evidence yet of a much closer, more managed relationship.
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What Bird Bones Revealed About the Human-Pigeon Relationship
At Hala Sultan Tekke, researchers reanalyzed an abundant amount of pigeon remains excavated from Late Bronze Age deposits to determine whether the birds were wild, managed, or something in between. Their findings point strongly toward human involvement.
Using zooarchaeological and stable isotope analysis, the team discovered that the pigeons likely ate diets rich in grain and seeds, supplemented with foods associated with human settlements and possibly even animal-based nutrients. The bird remains showed an unusually narrow dietary niche, which researchers say is consistent with human feeding or confinement.
Evidence of fledgling bones also revealed that pigeons were likely breeding within the settlement itself. This discovery made sense alongside the settlement’s architecture. Rock pigeons naturally prefer cliffs and rocky crevices, and researchers suggest the settlement’s tall, sheer-sided buildings may have mimicked ideal nesting environments.
Researchers also found burnt pigeon bones, which suggests that the birds were eaten. Archaeologists discovered many of the bones alongside other charred animal remains in what archaeologists identified as ritual feasting spaces containing an altar, a stone table, and serving ware.
“In this context, the bones were likely burned either as a means of discarding waste after consumption or as part of an offering or ritual. Either way, the location and method of deposition — within covered pits in a ritual space — is intentional,” wrote the researchers in their article.
What We Can Learn From Pigeon Domestication
The new findings represent some of the earliest direct biomolecular evidence that humans and pigeons shared spaces thousands of years ago, and may point to an early stage of domestication.
The study also highlights how animal domestication is not a simple, quick process and instead shows how species likely gradually adapted to human environments over generations.
“Further integrative studies, such as this one, will help fill the gaps in the story of pigeon domestication, contributing to our understanding of the prehistory of regions like Cyprus, where this bird was a significant and constant presence in everyday life,” concluded the study authors.
Read More: Ancient Dogs Started Diversifying 11,000 Years Ago, Long Before the Modern Breeds We Know Today
Article Sources
Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:
- This article references information from a study published in Antiquity: Uncovering the lives of rock doves (Columba livia) in Late Bronze Age Hala Sultan Tekke, Cyprus
