In a harbor city on Bronze Age Cyprus, pigeons gathered with humans around ritual feasts and daily meals, their bones now telling a story 3,400 years later. Archaeologists examining remains from Hala Sultan Tekke have discovered that rock doves were already semi-domesticated as early as 1400 BCE—nearly a thousand years before previously documented evidence—upending our understanding of when and how one of humanity's most familiar birds became our companions.
The birds we know today as common pigeons have lived alongside people for millennia, kept for meat, eggs, feathers, and fertilizer, and woven into religious and cultural practices across civilizations. Yet until now, the precise origins of their domestication remained a mystery. "We knew that pigeons must have become domesticated somewhere in the Middle East or Eastern Mediterranean, based mostly on the written record from Egypt, but we had no idea when or how," explains Anderson Carter from the University of Groningen, who led the research published in Antiquity.
To solve this puzzle, Carter and his team, including senior author Canan Çakırlar, studied bird bones from Hala Sultan Tekke, a major harbor settlement that thrived between 1650 and 1150 BCE. Using zooarchaeology to identify pigeon specimens and isotope analysis to examine their diets, the researchers uncovered something striking: the pigeons at the site had eaten almost identically to the humans there. "Either way, this very likely means that they were domesticated or on their way to being domesticated," Çakırlar notes. Such dietary overlap suggests the birds were either consuming food intentionally provided by people or living in such close proximity that they shared the same food sources—the hallmark of a developing domestication relationship.
The Cypriot site itself held particular importance for this research: located in the heart of the original distribution area of pigeons in the Eastern Mediterranean, it was rich with pigeon remains. The discovery is especially significant because the earliest direct archaeological evidence for domesticated pigeons previously came from Hellenistic Greece, dated to around 323–265 BCE. These new findings push that timeline back almost a full millennium.
But the relationship between pigeons and the people of Hala Sultan Tekke appears to have been deeper than simple utility. Many of the pigeon bones were burnt and buried together with other animal remains in ritual spaces, suggesting they were eaten during ceremonial feasts—an important cultural practice in Bronze Age Cyprus. The birds were not merely food; they held ceremonial significance, woven into the spiritual life of the community.
This research carries a message beyond archaeology. Carter emphasizes that the goal is to transform how we see these birds: "People that previously ignored pigeons on the street suddenly realize that this bird actually has a very interesting history. That's the goal ultimately, to change how we interact with and think about this bird, and other animal species, and start realizing that their story is also our story." Rather than viewing pigeons as urban pests or nuisances, we might recognize them as ancient partners in human civilization—creatures that have been shaping and shaped by our societies for thousands of years. Their presence in Bronze Age Cyprus reminds us that the bonds between humans and animals are far deeper and longer than we often realize.