HISTORIA ANIMALIUM - 1

This study examines the impact of our symbolic and spiritual relationship with animals on our cultural, cognitive, and emotional development since prehistoric times, using archaeological references. It is based on a wide variety of case studies ranging from the Inuit and Scythians to the Mediterranean civilizations and prehistoric Scandinavian communities. The author, in his own words, is interested in animals “not as a physical resource, but as a symbolic one,” and seeks to discover not “how they were cooked” or “what tools, weapons, or ornaments were made from their bones, horns, or teeth,” but “how they were conceptualized in funerary settings or religious art” and “how they influenced human cultural evolution.”

Cătălin Pavel, author, poet, academic, and archaeologist who popularized archaeology in Romania through his columns, presents concepts and debates about archaeozoology in a simple and entertaining way, easily understandable to all readers in this Romanian bestseller, 'The Animals That Made Us Human: Fur, Tails, and Feathers in Archaeology.'

Cătălin Pavel (b. 1976) is an archaeologist, academic, and author. He has participated in various archaeological excavations in Romania, Germany, France, England, Morocco, Israel, and especially Turkey (Miletus, Troy, and Gordion). He has received various doctoral and postdoctoral research fellowships from institutions such as the Panthéon-Sorbonne University in Paris, Oxford University, the Albright Institute for Archaeology in Jerusalem, and the New European College in Bucharest.

In addition to his academic works on archaeological methodology and classical archaeology, he has also published poetry and novels that have been translated into several European languages ​​and have won prestigious Romanian literary awards. Pavel, who has written over 250 articles in newspapers and magazines to popularize archaeology, is best known for his latest work, 'The Archaeology of Love: From Neanderthal Man to the Taj Mahal,' published in 2019, which has been translated into many languages ​​and won several awards.

Metin Omer was born in Mecidiye (Medgidia), Romania in 1987. He received his undergraduate degree from the Department of History, Faculty of History and Political Sciences, Ovidius University of Constanta in 2009. He obtained his master's degree in World and European Politics from the same faculty in 2011. In 2018, he successfully defended his doctoral thesis at Hacettepe University, Institute of Social Sciences, Department of History. His published books including 'The Turkish-Tatar Community in Romania Between the Two World Wars and Migrations to Turkey' (TTK Publications, 2023). He continues his academic career at the Black Sea Research Institute of Ovidius University of Constanta.