10 Deadly Animals Ancient Humans Kept As Pets

Egyptian priests hand-fed man-eating crocodiles dressed in gold. A person in Ice Age Jordan was buried with a pet fox 4,000 years before the first dog. And 18,000 years ago, someone was raising the deadliest bird alive. These are 10 animals our ancestors had no business taming — and the real evidence behind each one. 00:00 — Intro: the crocodile in gold 00:45 — #10 The Cassowary (the deadliest bird, raised in the Ice Age) 10:50 — #9 The Crocodile (temples of Sobek) 15:09 — #8 The Bear (raised as a child, killed as a god) 22:42 — #7 The Lion (the pharaoh's war-beast) 30:48 — #6 The Baboon (Egypt's "police" had fangs) 37:41 — #5 The Cheetah (tamed for 5,000 years, never domesticated) 44:09 — #4 The Fox (a pet 4,000 years before the dog) 50:20 — #3 The Hyena (the taming that failed) 56:55 — #2 The Mongoose (the wild thing we invited inside) 1:01:54 — #1 The Elephant (the predynastic grave at Hierakonpolis) 1:07:34 — Finale: why we tame the untameable Peer-reviewed anchors: Douglass, K. et al. (2021). "Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene sites in the montane forests of New Guinea yield early record of cassowary hunting and egg harvesting." PNAS 118(40). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2100117118 — https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas... Maher, L. A. et al. (2011). "A Unique Human-Fox Burial from a Pre-Natufian Cemetery in the Levant (Jordan)." PLoS ONE 6(1): e15815. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0015815 — https://journals.plos.org/plosone/art... Dominy, N. J. et al. (2020). "Mummified baboons reveal the far reach of early Egyptian mariners" (origins of sacred baboons / Punt). eLife — https://elifesciences.org/articles/60860 By entry: #10 Crocodile — Herodotus, Histories Book II (sacred crocodiles adorned and hand-fed); cult of Sobek; Crocodilopolis (Shedet); mass crocodile mummification (Tebtunis, Kom Ombo). World History Encyclopedia: https://www.worldhistory.org/Sobek/ #9 Mongoose — Egyptian mongoose ("Pharaoh's rat") as semi-wild pest control; Pliny the Elder, Natural History (the ichneumon legends); votive bronzes and mummies. #8 Elephant — Hierakonpolis Expedition (Renée Friedman), HK6 elite cemetery, predynastic captive elephant: https://www.hierakonpolis-online.org/ #7 Fox — see Maher et al. 2011 above; University of Cambridge release: https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/w... #6 Hyena — Old Kingdom Saqqara reliefs (tombs of Mereruka, Ti) showing hyena force-feeding; the Harar (Ethiopia) hyena feeders as a modern parallel. #5 Cheetah — tamed hunting cheetahs from c. 3000 BCE (Sumer, Egypt) through Mughal India (Akbar's c. 1,000 cheetahs; the single recorded captive litter); cheetah genetic bottleneck and captive-breeding difficulty. #4 Baboon — relief from the Mastaba of Tepemankh, 5th Dynasty, Saqqara (the disputed "police baboon"); baboons sacred to Thoth; fig-harvesting monkey scenes; see Dominy et al. 2020 above. #3 Bear — Ainu iyomante (bear-sending ceremony); circumpolar bear ceremonialism. A. I. Hallowell, "Bear Ceremonialism in the Northern Hemisphere" (1926); Neil Gordon Munro, Ainu Creed and Cult. #2 Lion — Ramesses II and the Battle of Kadesh reliefs (Abu Simbel, the Ramesseum); the Saqqara lion skeleton found by Alain Zivie's mission, 2004; Assyrian royal lion hunts (Ashurbanipal, Nineveh). #1 Cassowary — see Douglass et al. 2021 above; CNN/Smithsonian/ScienceDaily coverage (Sept 2021). #ancientegypt #archaeology #history #prehistory #animals #cassowary #cheetah #ancienthistory #iceage #domestication #ainu #ramesses #science #documentary prehistoric animals, tamed animals, ancient egypt, sobek crocodile, pet fox, Uyun al-Hammam, hyena taming, hunting cheetah, Akbar cheetahs, police baboon, Tepemankh, Ainu bear ceremony, iyomante, Ramesses II lion, Battle of Kadesh, cassowary, deadliest bird, Kristina Douglass, New Guinea, Hierakonpolis, animal domestication, ancient history documentary