Re-creation of Kofun Period dog on display at Nara museum
SAKURAI, Nara Prefecture—Statue re-creations of an ancient dog breed modeled after fossilized remains excavated at the Makimuku ruins are now on display at a local museum here until Sept. 28.
The city education board and municipal Research Center for Makimukugaku announced the completion of the brown and gray models on April 22, a day ahead of their unveiling at the Sakurai City Center for Archaeological Operations.
Researchers were fortunate to work with a nearly complete skeleton of what they believe is a female canine who was at least 18 months old and lived during the first half of the third century based on where the remains and other artifacts were found. This would have been right at the beginning of the Kofun Period (third to seventh centuries).
As a whole, the Makimuku ruin is designated as a national historic site and is a front-runner for the location of the Yamatai state, which is thought to have been ruled by Queen Himiko around the third century.
This is the second case in Japan where skeletal remains were successfully used to re-create what a dog of the past may have looked like.
The Yayoi dog was the first instance—its bones were discovered at the Kamei ruins located in Yao, Osaka Prefecture, known for the remains of settlements from the Yayoi Pottery Culture Period (1000 B.C.-A.D. 250).
A CITY'S REQUEST
After the initial discovery of the Makimuku dog in January 2015, the research center decided how they would go about restoring its likeness and organized an interdisciplinary team.
Members hailed from a range of backgrounds with expertise in archaeology, anatomy and evolutionary biology, among other areas of study.
Models of individual bones were crafted to assemble a 3-D replica of the skeleton, and the team chose to reference the Yayoi dog for the missing pieces.
Based on this specimen, they posit that the Makimuku breed stood about 48 centimeters tall and 58 cm long. This puts them around the same size as today's female Kishu and Shikoku dog breeds and larger than the Shiba Inu.
And although the Yayoi dog variety was referenced for the project, the Makimuku breed is thought to have had a smaller head and slender body with long legs and paws.
These characteristics make it difficult to place the Makimuku dogs in the lineage of canines from the Yayoi period; one possibility is that they were brought from mainland China or the Korean Peninsula.
The true color of the breed's fur is unknown. Researchers extrapolated the brown and gray coats based on the genomes of canines from the time periods that preceded and followed.
One more unknown falls on the public to discern. The city is calling for ideas on what to nickname the dog.
Entries are limited to one per person and those interested can fill out the form with the nickname and meaning behind it. Forms must be emailed, mailed or submitted to the box at the Sakurai City Center for Archaeological Operations by June 30.
ROYALTY AND SACRIFICE
The dog's bones were unearthed along with pottery and wooden items in a ditch running from northeast to southwest of a residential area in the Makimuku ruins. The pottery is dated from the same time frame as the dog.
Rather than being a stray's grave, the ditch is thought to have been part of the 'Royal Palace of Himiko' as well as the future site of one of Japan's largest buildings during the first 50 years of the Kofun Period. At about 3.2 meters wide and a meter deep, the ditch cuts through the building plan.
'It is highly likely that this dog shared time and space with Himiko. The restoration is highly accurate and has high academic values in studying the history of dogs in Japan,' said Kaoru Terasawa, who serves as director of the research center and has an archaeology background.
The state of the remains also offers clues on the canine's role as it appears to have suffered no broken bones or other injuries.
This led Taiji Miyazaki, a visiting researcher of archaeology at the Foundation of East Asia Cultural Properties Institute in South Korea, to extrapolate that 'the dog may have been offered as an animal sacrifice in a ground-breaking ceremony before establishing a building or other ritual."
Miyazaki was on the team that created the Makimuku dog statues and was also involved in the reconstruction of the Yayoi dog excavated from the Kamei ruins.
Another remarkable aspect about this specimen is that although canine remains from other eras in the country's distant past have been discovered, it is rare to find so many preserved bones of a dog from the early Kofun Period.
According to Masashi Maruyama, a professor of animal archaeology at Tokai University who is another member of the restoration project, the oldest dog bones discovered in Japan are thought to date to the early Jomon Pottery Culture Period (c. 14500 B.C.-1000 B.C.), excavated at the Natsujima shell mound in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture.
Archaeologists have unearthed many dog fossils from the Jomon period at shell mounds and ruins around the country. While some of those dogs received burials, most remains were found scattered at the dig sites.
Dogs of the subsequent Yayoi period, meanwhile, are posited to be a hybrid breed larger than their Jomon ancestors who migrated from China or the Korean Peninsula and those born in the Japanese archipelago.
The trend continues with Miyazaki describing the Makimuku as one of the largest breeds of the Kofun Period based on its height relative to its head size along with elongated body and legs.
This also opens the possibility that a new, larger dog was brought over from the Korean Peninsula during the Kofun Period.
'It is very significant that the specific physical characteristics, such as the size of the head, neck, body and the length of legs, were restored based on clear evidence,' said Maruyama when commenting on the re-creation of the Makimuku breed.
OVERSEAS TEAM-UPS
Japan is not the only country with many researchers looking into ancient dog breeds.
"If DNA analysis of dogs advances in South Korea and China, we will learn new things along with research into their traits,' said Miyazaki. 'Research into East Asian dogs is very hot right now."
One such project involves the Neukdo archaeological site on a small island in southern South Korea where the bones of at least 28 dogs were discovered.
The dogs had been buried and their remains are believed to date to the first century B.C., which corresponds to the middle of the Yayoi period in Japan.
Around half of the canines excavated had skeletons that were nearly intact. Researchers distinguished three to five separate breeds of large to small dogs based on size and proportions.
Currently, Yohei Terai is conducting DNA analyses of the dogs discovered at the Neukdo site with researchers from the Gaya National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage in South Korea.
The associate professor at the Research Center for Integrative Evolutionary Sciences at the Graduate University for Advanced Studies specializes in researching the origin of dogs via the genomes of Japanese wolves and ancient dogs.
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