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Excavations at Tavsanli Hoyuk in Kutahya province, western Türkiye, have uncovered paw prints that date back about 4,000 years, Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy announced.
Ersoy said in a post on social media platform NSosyal that an animal left the prints on mud brick that had not yet dried. The brick was found in the debris of a Bronze Age building that collapsed in a fire and had once been part of a wall in the structure, he said.
The Culture and Tourism Ministry said in a statement that mud brick is made by mixing soil, water and straw, pouring the mixture into molds and drying it in the sun. According to the statement, a dog walked over the brick found at Tavsanli Hoyuk before it dried, and the prints stayed on the surface as the brick hardened.
The brick was later used in the wall of the building, and it remained in the debris after the structure collapsed in the fire, the ministry said. The find offers a concrete trace of daily life in the settlement.
The excavations, led by Prof. Erkan Fidan since 2021, have uncovered the architectural remains and archaeological finds of Tavsanli Hoyuk, which Ersoy described as one of the largest Bronze Age cities in western Anatolia. The ministry said the paw prints show that the work also documents small, unexpected details of daily life in the city about 4,000 years ago.
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