“Early Humans Preferred Foxes as Pets - Softpedia” plus 1 more |
| Early Humans Preferred Foxes as Pets - Softpedia Posted: 28 Jan 2011 03:39 AM PST New archaeological evidences would appear to suggest that the dog became man's best friend millennia after it was first domesticated. Data collected from a prehistoric burial ground in Jordan indicated that early humans preferred the company of foxes to that of dogs. The conclusion was drawn after investigators looked closely at all the remnants found buried at the Jordan site. One of the most amazing discoveries was that of a human being buried next to a fox. Studies determined that a part of the fox was then transferred to another grave, that was located nearby. Experts believe that this is indubitable proof that foxes played an important role in the prehistoric human society. Archaeologists with the University of Cambridge, in the United Kingdom, believe that this type of funeral rite hints at a very close and deep connection that may have existed between humans and foxes at the time the individuals filling those two graves died.In a paper the experts published yesterday, January 27, they argue that the fox found in the grave was most likely a pet, and that it was buried with its human in order to accompany them in the afterlife. This research provides evidence that foxes were preferred to dogs long before the canines began being used to hunt them. The finding is the first to attest to the burial of an animal with its master. The northern Jordan site is called Uyun-al-Hammam and is in fact a 16,500-year-old cemetery. This means that the fox uncovered by the researchers was buried 4,000 years before the first known human-dog burial. The event also took place 7,000 years ahead of the next known fox burial. Overall, it could be that this animal funeral hints at the growing cultural sophistication that our ancestors were going through at that point in time, the experts write in the journal PLoS ONE. "The burial site provides intriguing evidence of a relationship between humans and foxes which predates any comparable example of animal domestication," explains Leverhulme Center for Human Evolutionary Studies expert Dr Lisa Maher. "What we appear to have found is a case where a fox was killed and buried with its owner. Later, the grave was reopened for some reason and the human's body was moved," she adds. "But because the link between the fox and human had been significant, the fox was moved as well, so that the person, or people, would still be accompanied by it in the afterlife," the expert goes on to say. This type of sophistication was usually associated with the farming societies of the Neolithic era, which did not appear until several thousand years later. On the other hand, the Cambridge team says, foxes were not preferred to dogs for a long time. In all likelihood, early humans never fully managed to domesticate the animals, and so they turned to the more malleable dogs instead. It took several millennia to fully domesticate them, but the effort was well worth it. Follow the editor on Twitter @tudorvieru This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Former Pets.com CEO: Here's Real Reason The Company Blew Up - San Francisco Gate Posted: 03 Feb 2011 06:45 AM PST
Former Pets.com CEO Julie Wainwright took exception to what we had to say about the demise of her former company. Wainwright, who is now the founder & CEO of Smart Now, had this to say in the comments section of our story: Here is the real story behind Pets.com. We did sell dog food for 1/2 price for 2 weeks only as a customer acquisition tool and because the 8 other pets sites funded were doing the same. We also had an auto order feature. We did NOT go out of business because we were selling pet food for below cost. We stocked and sold over 15,000 skus of pet related items--of which less than 600 hundred were pet food. Our average order was close to $37 -- only 50% of order had any food item in them. Here is what the world looked like in 2000....there were no plug and play solutions for ecommerce/warehouse management and customer service that could scale...which means that we had to employ 40+ engineers Cloud computing did not exist, which means that we had to have a server farm and several IT people to insure that the site did not go down. There were less than 250 Million worldwide Internet consumers in 2000- now there are 5 Billion. Amazon has reported a loss of nearly $900M in 1999...because guess what, ecommerce is a business of scale. And, the Internet bubble had burst...which meant that NO ONE was getting funded. Pets.com need a total of $260M of funding to get to breakeven. Sounds nuts now, but that was considered acceptable now. We had raised a total of $180M...and we knew that it would be hard if not impossible to raise the capital to get to break-even. The financial market was in a tailspin and the management of Pets.com believed that the company should be shut down to return money to shareholders...not run to bankruptcy. Please note that at least 1100 Internet companies, including Webvan with losses of over $1.5B, chose to file bankruptcy. Alex, I wish you the best. I also hope you get your facts straight before giving quotes to the media about Pets.com. You should be so lucky to create a brand icon and a company that acheived over $45M in revenue in nine months --leaving its competition in the dust and have a management team around you that makes hard decisions. Read the original story here. Join the conversation about this story » This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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