It’s such a treat to occasionally find a slab of sidewalk with a permanently imprinted dog paw. It tells a whole, adorable story. Now imagine that dog paw telling a story from 4000 years ago. That’s what happened, according to a social media post shared by Türkiye’s minister of culture and tourism, Mehmet Nuri Ersoy.
Archaeologists excavating the sprawling Bronze Age site of Tavşanlı Höyük have dug up a sun-dried mudbrick with an ancient dog’s paw print stuck in it.
Tavşanlı Höyük’te yaklaşık 4.000 yıllık pati izleri bulduk.
Kütahya’daki kazılarımızda, patili bir dostumuzun henüz kurumamış kerpicin üzerinde bıraktığı izlere ulaştık.
Tunç Çağı’nda yangın geçirerek yıkılan bir yapının molozu içinde bulunan bu kerpiç, bir zamanlar evin… pic.twitter.com/N8R6Xv1tMf— Mehmet Nuri Ersoy (@MehmetNuriErsoy) October 26, 2026
An Ancient Dog Accidentally Left Behind a 4,000-Year-Old Piece of History
The brick was part of a building wall that collapsed during an ancient fire at Tavşanlı Höyük, a massive Anatolian settlement where people have been setting up camp for up to 8,000 years. Project director Erkan Fidan explained that dogs have been around this part of the world for millennia, with ancient burials dating back nearly 16,000 years, suggesting our ancestors saw dogs as companions.
It’s a perfect example of how the more things change, the more they stay the same. We’re not going to be getting rid of dogs anytime soon, and as long as humans will be building stuff out of wet materials that dry into tough stuff able to withstand thousands of years of punishment, there will be bricks and sidewalk cement permanently imprinted with evidence of a dog that was perhaps a bit too curious and a worker who let out a deep, annoyed sigh.
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