Dogs have been buried even by human hunters millennials ago. Sometime with a last bone in its mouth for the passage to the afterlife.

The dog lived between 25,000 and 24,000 BC.... https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/what-makes-us-human/...

Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, lies buried beside his dogs, as requested in his testament. I have lived as a philosopher and wish to be buried as such, without circumstance, without solemn pomp, without splendour. I want to be neither opened nor embalmed. Bury me in Sanssouci at the level of the terraces in a tomb which I have had prepared for myself…

>“Until then, it was considered eccentric to care so much about an animal that you would bury it,” Koudounaris says.

The thing that I think is evolving rapidly in our era is empathy for other beings, human and also animal. To understand what it would be like to be in their shoes and understand that very little separates us from them. It's not all about selfishness and just looking out for yourself and what happens to you. I know many will disagree, but that's what it looks like from a zoomed out view of our history to me. I think love and empathy is a natural progression that accompanies intelligence. And that comforts me about the universe.

Calling it "the first" seems both myopic and awfully Eurocentric to me. Even pop culture history is enough to know that, for example, the ancient Egyptians often mummified pets.

I loved my pets, but I can't help but wonder if I wouldn't be more callous/practical about them if I was in the 1800s, back when the infant mortality rate was in the 30-50% range.

for additional context - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivisection#David_Ferrier_and_... - it were the years when they started to at least limit vivisection somewhat and require anesthesia during it.

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