We all know that dogs are one of the best things to happen to humanity. They’re adorable, helpful and sometimes, smart as humans.

Although the saying might say that dogs are ‘man’s best friend’, a new study has found how it’s actually women who have helped in creating this strong bond and helping dogs evolve to be our loyal pets.

This is according to a cross-cultural study by researchers at the Washington State University, which has revealed that there could have been numerous factors that helped strengthen the bond between humans and dogs including, temperature, hunting and even gender.

Jaime Chambers, a WSU anthropology Ph.D. student and first author on the paper published in the Journal of Ethnobiology, explained, “Our modern society is like a blip in the timeline of human history. The truth is that human-dog relationships have not looked like they do in Western industrialized societies for most of human history, and looking at traditional societies can offer a wider vision.”

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Scientists have identified the presence of a non-tobacco plant in ancient Maya drug containers for the first time.

Originally buried more than 1,000 years ago on Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula, the vessels also contain chemical traces present in two types of dried and cured tobacco, Nicotiana tabacum and N. rustica. The research team, led by anthropology postdoc Mario Zimmermann, thinks the Mexican marigold was mixed with the tobacco to make smoking more enjoyable.

“While it has been established that tobacco was commonly used throughout the Americas before and after contact, evidence of other plants used for medicinal or religious purposes has remained largely unexplored,” Zimmermann said. “The analysis methods developed in collaboration between the Department of Anthropology and the Institute of Biological Chemistry give us the ability to investigate drug use in the ancient world like never before.”

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Want to know whether an ancient Sogdian smoked cannabis or a Viking got high on henbane? A new method, which analyzes drug residue in the tartar of teeth, may soon be able to tell. The method, which found drug traces on 19th century skeletons—and more substances than standard blood tests in 10 recently deceased individuals—could trace humanity’s drug habits back hundreds of thousands of years.

It’s a “new frontier,” says archaeologist Shannon Tushingham of Washington State University, Pullman, who investigates ancient tobacco use in North America, but was not involved in the new work.

To study the history of medicines and drugs, most scientists scour smoking pipes and drinking vessels for lingering psychoactive molecules. But analysis of drug-coated artifacts often misses substances like hallucinogenic mushrooms that didn’t need containers. And the artifacts don’t reveal who got buzzed.

Because tartar seems to keep a long-term record of drug intake, it could be used in place of hair samples when criminal investigators need to test for substance use after drugs leave the bloodstream. And it could help rewrite the history of drug use, Tushingham says.

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Science Magazine

There’s more uses for a turkey than the centerpiece of your Thanksgiving feast.

Researchers believe the flightless fowl held deep significance for ancient Pueblo Indians in the American Southwest, who domesticated the bird but didn’t eat it.

Archaeologists at Washington State University examined a 800-year-old feather blanket from southeast Utah, one of the few remaining examples of its kind.

“The birds that supplied the feathers were likely being treated as individuals important to the household,” said anthropologist Bill Lipe. “This reverence for turkeys and their feathers is still evident today in Pueblo dances and rituals.”

“As ancestral Pueblo farming populations flourished, many thousands of feather blankets would likely have been in circulation at any one time,” said Shannon Tushingham, a professor of anthropology at WSU and co-author of the study. “It is likely that every member of an ancestral Pueblo community, from infants to adults, possessed one.”

Surprisingly, the turkeys would have been treated more like pets or members of the family than dinner.

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