America’s First Banned Book Really Ticked Off the Plymouth Puritans

The author, known as the “Lord of Misrule,” had the audacity to erect a maypole in Massachusetts.

Myles Standish and his fellow Puritans crashing the festivities at Merrymount. ULLSTEIN BILD/ULLSTEIN BILD VIA GETTY IMAGES

APPARENTLY, THOMAS MORTON DIDN’T GET the memo. The English businessman arrived in Massachusetts in 1624 with the Puritans, but he wasn’t exactly on board with the strict, insular, and pious society they had hoped to build for themselves. “He was very much a dandy and a playboy,” says William Heath, a retired professor from Mount Saint Mary’s University who has published extensively on the Puritans. Looking back, Morton and his neighbors were bound to butt heads sooner or later.

Within just a few short years, Morton established his own unrecognized offshoot of the Plymouth Colony, in what is now the town of Quincy, Massachusetts (the birthplace of presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams). He revived forbidden old-world customs, faced off with a Puritian militia determined to quash his pagan festivals, and wound up in exile. He eventually sued and, like any savvy rabble-rouser should, got a book deal out of the whole affair. Published in 1637, his New English Canaan mounted a harsh and heretical critique of Puritan customs and power structures that went far beyond what most New English settlers could accept. So they banned it—making it likely the first book explicitly banned in what is now the United States. A first edition of Morton’s tell-all—which, among other things, compares the Puritan leadership to crustaceans—recently sold at auction at Christie’s for $60,000.

The Puritans’ move across the pond was motivated by both religion and commerce, but Morton was there only for the latter reason, as one of the owners of the Wollaston Company. He loved what he saw of his new surroundings, later writing that Massachusetts was the “masterpiece of nature.” His business partner—slave-owning Richard Wollaston—moved south to Virginia to expand the company’s business, but Morton was already deeply attached to the land, in a way his more religious neighbors likely couldn’t understand. “He was extremely responsive to the natural world and had very friendly relations with the Indians,” says Heath, while “the Puritans took the opposite stance: that the natural world was a howling wilderness, and the Indians were wild men that needed to be suppressed.”

Thomas Morton (left) was fond of maypoles and May Day celebrations, like this 17th-century one in England (right). LEBRECHT MUSIC & ARTS / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; GETTY/WHITEMAY

After Wollaston left, Morton enlisted the help of some brave recruits—both English and Native—to establish the breakoff settlement of Ma-Re Mount, also known as Merrymount, preserved today in the Quincy neighborhood and park of the same name. Morton essentially asked his neighbors, “What if we just throw [Wollaston] out and start our own utopian colony based on Plato’s Republic, and also as a society of the Native Americans?” explains Rhiannon Knol, a specialist in the Books & Manuscripts department at Christie’s in New York. “And that sounded a lot better to them.” Some of them, at least.

The Puritan authorities didn’t see Merrymount as a free-wheeling annoyance; they saw an existential threat. The problem wasn’t only that Morton was taking goods and commerce away from Plymouth, but that he was giving that business to the Native Americans, including trading guns to the Algonquins. With Plymouth’s monopoly dissolved and its perceived enemies armed, Morton had perhaps done more than anyone else to undermine the Puritan project in Massachusetts. Worse yet, in the words of Plymouth’s governor William Bradford, Morton condoned “dancing and frisking together” with the Native Americans—activities that were banned even without Native American participation. It was basically an early colonial version of Footloose. Governor Bradford nicknamed Morton the “Lord of Misrule,” and it’s not hard to imagine him wearing that title like a crown.

It was basically an early colonial version of Footloose.

There could be no greater symbol of such misrule than Morton’s maypole. Reaching 80 feet into the air, the structure conjured all the vile, virile vices of Merry England that the Puritans had hoped to leave behind. Throughout medieval Europe, maypoles had been a popular installation for May Day (or Pentecost or midsummer, in some regions)—encouraging human fertility as the land itself sprung up from winter. Now that was a tradition that Morton could get behind, and he gladly called upon the residents of Merrymount to drink, dance, and frolic around the pole. The establishment of Merrymount had been a provocation, but Morton’s May Day celebrations meant war.

During the 1628 festivities, a Puritan militia led by Myles Standish invaded Merrymount and chopped down the maypole. (The incident later inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “The May-Pole of Merry Mount,” first published in 1832.) Morton was tried for supplying arms to the Natives, and expelled to an island off the coast of New Hampshire to be left for dead. Somehow, he managed to hitch passage on a ship back to England, where he sued the Massachusetts Bay Company. The trial provided him with the basis for his book, much of which was composed at London’s Mermaid Tavern with a little help from his friends, including famed poet and playwright Ben Jonson.

Thomas Morton’s New English Canaan didn’t mince words. COURTESY CHRISTIE’S

Heath is careful to stress that the book is not a literary masterwork, but he acknowledges that it has its moments. Knol says she was particularly struck by the nicknames Morton threw at his Puritan foes, whom he called “cruell Schismaticks.” It’s hard to know who got it worse between Standish and John Endecott, governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony (Plymouth’s neighbor to the north): Endecott is known in the book as “Captaine Littleworth,” Standish as “Captaine Shrimp.” Even more radical than his belittling appellations were Morton’s subversive policy ideas, which went so far as to recommend “demartialising” the colonies. Unsurprisingly, the Puritans were appalled. Bradford, Plymouth’s governor, called New English Canaan “an infamous and scurrilous book against many god and chief men of the country, full of lies and slanders and fraught with profane calumnies against their names and persons and the ways of God.”

It’s likely that the book scandalized England as well. The book’s title page names Amsterdam as the place of publication rather than London—but that’s hard to believe, as that very Amsterdam publisher was in fact a well-known purveyor of Puritan books. Knol says that Amsterdam was likely listed as a lie to protect the actual publisher in London.

After publishing the book, Morton braved a venture back to his beloved Massachusetts, only to be turned right back around upon arrival. He tried to cross the Atlantic once again in 1643, and was this time exiled to Maine, where he died. His maypole may have been chopped down and his book banned, but Morton’s legacy lives on in Quincy, though sadly there’s no maypole in Merrymount Park

Sanctuary!

A Fox and kits, a home, have found, a place, part, of enchanted ground.
They're safe, protected, from all harm; they live, in peace, 'neath Fairies' charm!
No hunter, with his baying hounds, will portal, find, for door is bound,
with spell, to keep all danger, 'way, for fierce, in love, are hearts, of Fae!
The foxes, to escape the death, that stalks them, when men's hearts, bereft, of pity, hunt, for wicked sport, have desperate need, of secret port!
Safe Mama fox draws in, sweet air, in happiness, beyond compare.
And her kits play, free, from the fear, that haunted her, 'fore she came, here.
Above them, little Fairies fly, and sing sweet, lilting lullabies, and babbling brook, its secrets, shares, with fat green frog, who's listening, there.
Wildflowers, purple, send their scent, to waft, in airy element,
and bless the eye, with hue's delight, and cuddle Fairies, close, at night.
An ancient Tree, great power, unleashed, has grown huge roots, around that niche, (that portal, where pure joy is found, that portal, to enchanted ground)!
And Fairies, through that portal, flit, to creatures, find, in need, of it, and lead them, to where sweet peace reigns, and where, they'll ne'er feel fear, again!

Donna L. Ferguson Dudley, copyright 2019 4/23/19
Art, by Susan Schroder Arts

Shadow Weaver

I am the Shadow Weaver,
I creep between your light and dark,
I drink of your joy and your sorrow,
I gift you both love and hard lessons.
For I am the Shadow Weaver,
It's me that you fear in the dark,
It's me that brings you your wishes.
I gift you abundance and pain.

Hear my crow caw in the morning mist,
"Where shall we go today" she asks,
"Shall we see how high we can fly until you fear the fall"?
I am The Badb, The Washer at the Ford, The Dark Goddess,
You cannot be my daughter if you're full of fear!
Did you really think this path would be easy?
Did you expect to be reborn without having to die first?

Walk my path with me child,
Follow me through the Cedar Veil,
Learn to fear neither death nor life, dark or light,
Walk with the dead and the living alike.
I am the Shadow Weaver and I bring you my gift,
Weave your web of red and grey in my name,
Become the Banshee and use your fury,
And howl at the fear that envelops the soul.

©Badb’s Cauldron (LW)
(Artwork: Owner Unknown)

The Adventurous Seafaring Women of the Age of Sail, in Their Own Words

Annie Brassey on the deck of Sunbeam. She wrote a famed account of her time at sea. CHRONICLE / ALAMY


“LIFE IS TOO SHORT! I wanted to brighten it up as much as possible, and I shall never regret the decision which I took. Whereas had I acted differently, I would have nothing but regret.” These words were written by Rose de Freycinet, a woman from France, in her journal—and the “decision” was to disguise herself as a man in order to travel the world aboard the French corvette Uranie in 1817. Shipwreck, scandal, and homesickness stalked de Freycinet during her global tour, all documented in her journal, Mémoires, now kept in the State Library of New South Wales, in Sydney, Australia.

Stories of sea voyages, especially first-person accounts, are a source of enduring fascination, full of discovery, endurance, survival, and larger-than-life characters—usually men. In The Sea Journal: Seafarers’ Sketchbooks, historian Huw Lewis-Jones collects diaries, letters, and drawings, made at sea, “as if curating a kind of global exhibition of rare artworks and personal materials,” he says. “But of course this is only possible where journals, diaries, and sketchbooks survive.” Among those are the rare but compelling tales of the women who endured the hardships of life at sea: de Freycinet and her cross-dressing predecessor, botanist Jeanne Baret; Nantucket whaling captain’s wife Susan Veeder; and aristocratic English traveler Annie Brassey. “They faced the same challenges the men did,” says Lewis-Jones, “and then some.”

An illustration of Rose de Freycinet’s visit to Timor, in Indonesia, 1818. STATE LIBRARY OF NEW SOUTH WALES

De Freycinet was just 23 years old when she arrived in the port of Toulon, intent on joining a three-year scientific voyage to the Pacific with her husband, Captain Louis de Freycinet. With Charles as a conspirator, she dressed as a man to begin the voyage (though she was soon found out), and became the first woman to document a circumnavigation of the world. Her journal reveals a rare perspective on the Age of Sail. Sea travelers kept journals for many different reasons, says Lewis-Jones: “navigation, recording coastlines, keeping mind and soul occupied, overcoming fear, as much as boredom.” De Freycinet wrote her journal as a series of letters to a friend, Caroline. She wrote as a means of escape from both the endless expanse of the sea and the tight confines of the shipboard cloister that kept her separate from the male crew. “You told me you wished to accompany me everywhere,” she wrote, “I therefore have no choice but to bore you a little whenever I myself am not having much fun.”

Life at sea is reflected in her journals—long periods without incident punctuated by moments of sudden activity and panic. In 1820, after two years at sea, inclement weather strafed Uranie and dragged it toward the rocky coast of the Falkland Islands, off the South American coast. “I shall never forget it as long as I live,” she wrote. Soon the ship struck a rock and the crew used pumps to keep the ailing vessel afloat as it sought a place to safely run aground. “However,” records Rose, “the ship was taking water; the breeze was light and the strength of the men, who had not eaten for a long time, was failing.” All were spared when Uranie ran “almost imperceptibly onto the sand at 3 a.m.”

By then the expedition had taken its toll on de Freycinet. “I am pale, yellowish, and have sunken eyes: in short I look like a ghost,” she wrote. She also underwent a mental transformation: “It is true that everything that I have endured during the last two years has given me such a sombre outlook on life that I have become a philosopher and that the gay, wild and scatterbrained Rose has become serious.”

Though women were forbidden from naval vessels, the de Freycinets were fêted upon their return to France. But de Freycinet had not been the first woman known to have posed as a man to sail around the world. That was Jeanne Baret, daughter of agricultural laborers from France’s Loire Valley. With the collusion of a lover, she passed as “Jean” on Louis Antoine de Bougainville’s 1766 expedition, where she worked as a botanist, to sail around the world. If she kept a journal it is not known, but her remarkable story survives in the accounts of four crewmates.

Jeanne Baret (left) dressed as a man to begin a long sea voyage, with the help of her partner, naturalist Philibert Commerson (right). STATE LIBRARY NEW SOUTH WALES; HULTON ARCHIVE / GETTY IMAGES

Baret’s ally and lover was scientist Philibert Commerson. “That said, the quick-wittedness and determination needed to sustain her disguise was Baret’s alone,” says Glynis Ridley, of the University of Louisville and author of The Discovery of Jeanne Baret. After a year and a half at sea, she was reportedly revealed as a woman in Tahiti—though she had probably aroused suspicion already. She did not relieve herself with the crew and the surgeon noted that her care for Commerson “did not seem natural for a male servant.”

Both de Freycinet and Baret were seriously transgressing social norms. Merely entering the company of men was seen as morally suspect, says Ridley. And both were also involved in scientific work. “Baret’s life spans a period that was one of intense debate about women’s exposure to scientific knowledge,” says Ridley. “A female stowaway was a curiosity, a female botanist was a breach in the natural order of things.” Baret became the first woman recipient of a French government pension for her contribution to science. Ultimately, says Ridley, “Baret refused to be bound by others’ limited expectations for someone of her sex and class.”

AS TIME PASSED, SOME NAVIES permitted officers to bring their wives aboard, but on merchant vessels, where space and speed were at a premium, the situation was different. “Merchant vessels rarely carried women except as passengers or, of course in the case of the slave trade, as cargo,” says Lisa Norling, a historian at the University of Minnesota who specializes in women and gender in the maritime world. Eventually even merchants and whalers saw more women on board. “By the early 19th century it was becoming more common, especially as non-naval vessels were going farther and farther away.”

The title page of Susan Veeder’s journal and a page from November 1849, when the ship was in what is now French Polynesia. COURTESY NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION, MA

The journal of Susan Veeder is furnished with gorgeous watercolors, several of which Lewis-Jones reproduces in The Sea Journal, and traces the voyage she embarked upon in 1848 on the Nantucket whaling ship Nauticon. Veeder’s entries make brief mention of weather conditions and islands sighted, but her illustrations of the Galápagos, Pitcairn Island, and Peru truly stand out. Her journal otherwise describes the hospitality she encountered—“the Captn gave me Jar of plums a tin of soup a Cheese a few bottles of wine”—and her homesickness. “Going along nicely towards home,” she writes. “I hasten the time when we may arrive.”

Due to declining whale numbers, in the 19th century whalers had to hunt farther from home. Like in the navies, captains and others were sometimes allowed by owners to bring their families with them. Women had long provided essential support to the whale industry from shore. Veeder, wife of Nauticon’s captain, and women like her were obliged to participate in arduous voyages to the Pacific. “For some of them, it was very clear they felt their place was to be with their husband,” says Norling. “That was their job.”

A captain’s wife would have had “privileges but real restrictions on most of the whaling vessels,” she adds. “They were not allowed on deck when there was a whale that was being processed because they would be in the way…. The whole deck would become a slaughterhouse. It stunk, it was dirty, and the smoke was horrific.” For the crew, the captain’s wife would have personified the difference in rank—and the men resented anything that prolonged their tours, such as the captain putting into port for his family’s health.

Seafaring was wearisome, but the tedium made moments of joy and pain stand out. On December 31, 1849, Veeder wrote that her daughter Mary, also on the voyage, “is 11 months old has 7 teeth creeps all about the ship and is very cunning.” Barely three months later, Mary became fatally ill in Tahiti. For five years Veeder shared in the hardship of Nauticon, raising a family at sea. She lost a daughter and later, her husband—to infidelity.

Paintings from the journal of Susan Veeder, including Albemarle Islands, now Isabela, in the Galápagos (left), and Pitcairn Island, where the crew visited the house of Bounty mutineer Fletcher Christian (right). COURTESY NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION, MA

Toward the turn of the century, the Age of Sail was passing into memory. Steamships were faster and more reliable, and required different skills, such as the management of coal rather than the wind. Old hands lamented the decline of sailing and the dull monotony of steaming. But there were also those, such as Lady Annie Brassey, who embraced the technology’s capacity for travel and romance.

Sunbeam was a 532-ton, three-masted schooner equipped with 9,000 yards of sail and a 70-horsepower steam engine. It had a crew of 43, including Brassey and her family, and it was the first steam yacht to circumnavigate the globe, in 1876 and 1877. The English heiress wrote daily letters about her experiences on board, and published them in the bestselling A Voyage in the ‘Sunbeam’.

Her curiosity was sated thanks to her class and marriage into the family of a railway tycoon, which let her travel in luxury, to esteemed receptions around the world. She was also an energetic collector, and many of the items she procured along the way are in museums in her native Sussex. She writes of visiting pawnbrokers’ shops where “out of funny little boxes and bags and parcels [they] produce all sorts of rare and curious things.” Among her unusual collection was a feathered cloak from Hawaiʻi, a Buddhist offering vessel from Southeast Asia in the shape of a sacred hamsa bird, and a helmet mask from Papua New Guinea made of wood, fiber, and mud.

Annie Brassey (left) went around the world on Sunbeam, a three-masted schooner (right) with a steam engine. THOMAS BRASSEY / PUBLIC DOMAIN; KIRK AND SONS OF COWES / HERITAGE IMAGES / GETTY IMAGES

Brassey’s letters were “a sort of open diary” for family, says Julian Porter, curator at Bexhill Museum in Sussex. “Annie’s books were in some way just opening up that distribution list to the general public.” She discussed food, sights, and the people she met, as well as crises—threats of being boarded one day, a volcanic dust storm another. “Happily, the children don’t know what fear is,” she observed. “The maids, however, were very frightened, as some of the sea had got down into the nursery.”

“Annie wasn’t a natural sailor,” says Porter. She “often suffered from seasickness but rarely complained. She was almost completely fearless.” Brassey was always troubled by ill health, however, and was finally stricken with malaria in 1887. “I am sure she realized she wasn’t likely to make it to old age,” says Porter. “She had a ‘bucket list’ and she was taking it by the horns.”

Like the seafaring women that preceded her, Brassey possessed courage and a sense of adventure as she pursued the lure of the sea. The journals and other items that bear the names of these women vividly document extraordinary journeys and experiences—both psychological and geographical. “That’s what true explorers do,” says Lewis-Jones, “change the way we see and understand the world.”

The Tombstone Tourist

"Who are you?"
"I am Death," said the creature. "I thought that was obvious."

"But you're so small!"

"Only because you are small. You are young and far from your Death, so I seem as anything would seem if you saw it from a long way off-very small, very harmless. But I am always closer than I . As you grow, I shall grow with you, until at the end, I shall loom huge and dark over your bed, and you will shut your eyes so as not to see me.
(Catherynne M. Valente)
***Photo taken Western Cemetery Edinburgh Scotland***

The Owain Glyndŵr Society

The Owain Glyndŵr Society was founded in November 1996.

The society was formed in Carmarthen with the intention of marking the six hundredth anniversary of Owain Glyndwr's uprising in September 1400. On September 16th 2000, the exact anniversary, a memorial stone was unveiled in Machynlleth, the town where Glyndwr held his first Parliament. The inscription on the Owain Glyndwr Stone reads;

Owain Glyndŵr instigated the Welsh Revolt against the rule of Henry IV of England. Although initially successful, the uprising was eventually put down. Glyndŵr was last seen in 1412 and was never captured.

Upon The Winds That Brown Leaves Blow

Upon the winds that brown leaves blow
My love is sent and it shall go;
My heart and kisses, wrapped in a silver hue
Make their way upon the breeze to you;
On every zephyr cool and fast
My love is sent and it shall last.

Dancing like the lively lambs in Spring
I send my love on every sparkling wind.
As it blows the Autumn leaves
I send my heart upon the breeze;
So, when you hear the whistling winds,
A fairy voice that laughs and sings –
Please know:
Upon this wind I send my love
And on every wind that blows!

Jack Turner.
Artist Sam Cannon

The Flight Of The Crows

The autumn afternoon is dying o'er
The quiet western valley where I lie
Beneath the maples on the river shore,
Where tinted leaves, blue waters and fair sky
Environ all; and far above some birds are flying by

To seek their evening haven in the breast
And calm embrace of silence, while they sing
Te Deums to the night, invoking rest
For busy chirping voice and tired wing--
And in the hush of sleeping trees their sleeping cradles swing.

In forest arms the night will soonest creep,
Where sombre pines a lullaby intone,
Where Nature's children curl themselves to sleep,
And all is still at last, save where alone
A band of black, belated crows arrive from lands unknown.

Strange sojourn has been theirs since waking day,
Strange sights and cities in their wanderings blend
With fields of yellow maize, and leagues away
With rivers where their sweeping waters wend
Past velvet banks to rocky shores, in canyons bold to end.

O'er what vast lakes that stretch superbly dead,
Till lashed to life by storm-clouds, have they flown?
In what wild lands, in laggard flight have led
Their aerial career unseen, unknown,
'Till now with twilight come their cries in lonely monotone?

The flapping of their pinions in the air
Dies in the hush of distance, while they light
Within the fir tops, weirdly black and bare,
That stand with giant strength and peerless height,
To shelter fairy, bird and beast throughout the closing night.

Strange black and princely pirates of the skies,
Would that your wind-tossed travels I could know!
Would that my soul could see, and, seeing, rise
To unrestricted life where ebb and flow
Of Nature's pulse would constitute a wider life below!

Could I but live just here in Freedom's arms,
A kingly life without a sovereign's care!
Vain dreams! Day hides with closing wings her charms,
And all is cradled in repose, save where
Yon band of black, belated crows still frets the evening air.

Emily Pauline Johnson
Artist Sam Cannon

Maria Palumbo

"I am bored with your shiny white goddesses
with bodies the width of a rope
attractive ones with flowing hair and hands
folded in prayer across the heart
to let us know they are spiritual and good and powerful
they go without the hunger that keeps the body awake.

They tell me what to eat
what to think, what to hate
a new exhausting fad in the name of consciousness.
Adorned with prayer beads and witchy mantras.
I feel empty in my body when I watch the spectacle.

That having the right guru outfit
and the next spiritual trip is what it is about.

These goddesses lead us down the rabbit hole
of some symbol, some ritual,
some other thing we should do
to let us know who we are.

You tell me to trust the Universe,
meaning sit around on my arse
or create a new vision board and
stuff a crystal in my bra
and I'm good to go.
I want the responsibility of my life.
I do not to hand it over to a horoscope,
a psychic.

I want to be messy and yearn
and feel what it is to be in relationship
that yearns right back.
I want to lick the goddamn whipped cream
that may or may not be vegan off my fingers.
I want to suck the marrow out of life and
feel it suck right back.
I want to feel the rain on my skin and
not package it into a pretty spiritual picture.
I want to knock down my walls
one by one until i can only see
myself staring right back."

~Maria Palumbo

photo: Helena Bonham Carter

Happy Sunday

"Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty if only we have the eyes to see them."
~ John Ruskin

"Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky."
~ Rabindranath Tagore

Even when it seems far away, the sun is still there, waiting for another chance to shine. Have a happy Sunday!

Puppy-Dog Eyes Evolved to Pull Your Heartstrings

Which is harder to resist: a child's big eyes pleading with you for a piece of candy, or a puppy's forlorn expression begging for table scraps? It's a tough call, and according to science, that may be thanks to evolution. A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that dogs specifically evolved puppy-dog eyes to appeal to humans.

Puppy-Dog Eyebrows

The researchers found that dogs, but not wolves, possess a muscle called the levator anguli oculi medialis, which raises their inner eyebrows and helps them produce those classic puppy-dog eyes. Specifically, the researchers note, this muscle enables an "infant-like" expression that's similar to the expression humans make when they're sad.

They figured this out by analyzing the anatomy of six dogs, all of different breeds, alongside four grey wolves. They found that the domestic dogs had this muscle but the wolves didn't, which suggests that the muscle was one of many traits that evolved as humans and dogs bonded over tens of thousands of years of evolution. A 2017 study backs this up: Dogs pretty much only use this look when interacting with humans.

SensorSpot / iStock / Getty Images Plus

That bond between man and dog is just as strong as that between a parent and child.

A 2015 study published in Science found that both dogs and humans experience a surge of oxytocin, known as the bonding hormone, when making eye contact with each other. That's the same thing that happens when humans make eye contact with someone they love, like a mother looking at her child. This discovery surprised the researchers since typically, staring can be seen as a sign of aggression by wild animals. But dogs seem to be an exception.

Maybe that's because humans see their dogs as their own kids. A 2014 study in PLOS ONE found that when women saw a picture of their dog, their brains responded similarly to if it were a picture of a child — but only if it were their own child. The reaction to their dog was stronger than it was to a picture of an unknown child, suggesting that this was more than just a reaction to a cute face. Maybe dogs really are our fur babies!

How Did We Get So Close?

How dogs became man's best friend is a question that's been subjected to a lot of scrutiny in the past few years. One study published in the journal Nature Communications in 2013 suggests that dogs became domesticated around 32,000 years ago. That study also found that humans and dogs evolved many traits in parallel, including certain genes for digestion and metabolism.

Why? Well, the researchers believe that as humans moved into more crowded living environments, their diet changed, and because dogs fed off human scraps, dogs' diets changed too. By analyzing the DNA of 10 different breeds of wolves and dogs and comparing it with human DNA, the researchers were able to find striking similarities in genes dealing with things like cholesterol transport and even the processing of serotonin. We've been bonded with dogs for so long that we've evolved together. Our friendship is written in our DNA.

But how did wolves turn into dogs originally? Researchers at Duke University's Canine Cognition Center think it happened like this: Wolves originally competed with early humans for food. They figured out that they could get more food if they scavenged for humans' scraps, so they started hanging around human settlements. But any wolf that posed a threat to humans risked being killed, so it paid to be friendly. Over time, these ancient good-dogs evolved to be even more appealing to humans, gaining floppy ears, youthful features — and those iconic puppy-dog eyes. Thus was the start of a beautiful friendship.