Blogtrotting with Bentley – Series 2

The Stone Age – BOGTROTT-UM

Hi there and welcome to my Dad’s Blog, which I am lucky enough to be taking over once again, as he is so busy creating the second volume of Worlds End.

This second series of Blogs are going to look at my family tree and an eventful one it is with a great many well-known folk heroes amongst their names, so I have a lot to live up.

I am going to start off with the earliest of records for the Bogtrotter line – The Stone Age.

It is now a well-known fact that Stone Age man kept a dog and recent studies of genes and behaviour show that there are ancient ties for man and mutt.

Caves at Bogtrott-Um

 Evidence of Bogtrotters at Bogtrott-Um

Bogtrott-Um Scroll

One well-known fact is that dogs are good at reading human signals to find food. The story of man’s friendship with dogs goes way back into pre-history. There have been new studies mad, which suggest that dogs shared the warmth of a fire and a bed with early Stone Age humans and trotted or Bogtrotted in our case beside them across the Bering Strait into the New World when it was all connected as one. This kind of domestication has also turned dogs into keen readers of human behaviour. Well, when you are with someone 24/7 you kind of get to know each other, don’t you? Just like Dad and me.

Stone Age humans were probably the first to tame dogs breeding them originally from wolves in East Asia around 15,000 years ago.

They now say that dogs from at least five domestic lineages probably accompanied humans across the land bridge from Siberia to Alaska and down into the Americas around 12,000-14,000 years ago. Well, there is actually a sixth one – The Bogtrotters, my lineage.

Experts say that they are unsure when exactly dogs arrived on the scene accompanying mankind is still uncertain and that they could have shown up as early as 40,000 years ago. They are actually wrong because archaeologists have recently found the ancient caves of Bogtrott-Um, which show evidence through cave paintings, archaic artefacts and the incredible, but little spoken about Bogtrott-Um Scrolls.

“These artefacts and accompanying fossils date from about 107,000 years ago,” says Clinton Wise-Smythe, an expert on the history at the Zoological Sciences Society of London University, adding, “Which is a most incredible thing to find out and is still being looked at, especially the use of scrolls, which were thought to be only in use several thousand years after this period of time.”

The companionship of men and dogs have led to a deeper understanding of one another. Dogs pick up the smell of hidden food incredibly well. It is amazing that even puppies are excellent at following someone’s gaze or pointing to food, even if they have had little experience of being amongst humans.

Although the usually time-period given by scientists to the domestication of dogs is around about 15,000 years ago that does not mean there were no dogs around before that time. And some recent research points to a 33,000-year-old Siberian fossil being related to modern dogs and wolves based on its DNA. Now with the finding of the caves at Bogtrott-Um this information has all been turned on its head.

Looking at the scrolls you can see that the story that unfolds on them shows a close-knit bond between the Bogtrotter and his Stone Age owner. He was taken for walks, fed and given a bed in the cave, just like we are today.

There are several scrolls and wall drawings, which depict several adventures with them two, although they have not as yet been given public scrutiny and as such I am sworn to secrecy, until such time as they have been studied to a suitable conclusion by archaeologists.

This would seem to be the origins of the Bogtrotter line, so my earliest relative on my family tree lived in a cave. I am so lucky to live in a nice big house with my Dad; spending many happy hours in his studio and then going out for walks or trips out in the car with him and the rest of the family – much better than a cave, especially in winter up here in the North of England.

I am extremely proud of my wonderfully exciting heritage as a Bogtrotter I and hope to be having some more of my own adventures real soon.

In my next outing, Blogtrotting, we will be visiting my relatives that lived in the Roman Empire; a relative called Bogtrottius.

I will now add, just like Dad does.

Until next time…

Have Fun!

Bentley Bogtrotter.