# Uncovering Human Tooth Marks in the Search for Dog Domestication: The Case of Coímbre Cave

## TL;DR

This study shows that tooth marks found at a prehistoric cave site were made by humans, not carnivores, offering new insights into human-animal interactions during the Upper Paleolithic era.

## Contribution

The study introduces a novel taphonomic approach combining geometric morphometrics and statistical analysis to identify the origin of tooth marks in archaeological contexts.

## Key findings

- Tooth marks at Coímbre Cave were produced by humans, not carnivores.
- The study highlights the potential of tooth mark analysis for understanding human-animal interactions.
- Taphonomic processes identified in the study are rarely documented in the archaeological record.

## Abstract

This work delves into the analysis of tooth marks supposedly produced by carnivores at the Upper Paleolithic site of Coímbre Cave. This is a Magdalenian site that shows significant human activity, yet tooth marks are also present on the bones. The objective of this work is to identify which carnivore produced these marks. However, our results have been surprising because they have shown that these tooth marks were not made by carnivores but by humans. This is important because it shows that humans could sometimes also produce tooth marks on bones.

The domestication of the dog (Canis lupus familiaris) is one of the oldest and most complex processes of interaction between humans and animals. This phenomenon may have begun sometime between 30 and 15 ky calBP. Archaeological and genetic studies have provided valuable insights into dog domestication, although the precise geographic location and origin of this process remain controversial and under debate. New methodologies, such as taphonomic analyses, offer opportunities to deepen our understanding of past human–dog interactions. In this context, the present study examines tooth marks found on some bone remains from the Upper Magdalenian site (15,500–13,200 cal BP) of Coímbre Cave (Peñamellera Alta, Asturias, Spain). The low incidence of carnivores at the site has raised the possibility that the tooth marks may have been produced by canids. However, a detailed taphonomic analysis combining geometric morphometrics with robust statistical methods—including MANOVA with post-hoc permutation tests—revealed that the marks identified at the site do not significantly differ from tooth marks produced by humans (p = 0.086). In contrast, tooth marks produced by other carnivores, such as Canis lupus signatus and Canis lupus familiaris, showed significant differences (p < 0.003). Although our study could not confirm the presence of domesticated dogs at the Magdalenian levels of Coímbre Cave, it has documented taphonomic processes that are rarely identified in the archaeological record. Furthermore, this study highlights the potential of tooth mark analysis as a key tool for future research on human–animal interactions in archaeological contexts.