ABSTRACT
Human attitudes toward the fauna convey a faithful manifestation of time and space, combining religious and philosophical tenets with ecological and environmental demands. The prevailing attitudes toward animals reflect in this regard just a fragment of the constant process of reflection and contemplation and the resulting attempts to cope with a challenging environment, the rules of which remain unknown or incomprehensible for most human beings. Selected from the rich spectrum of human attitudes toward the nonhuman world, this chapter focuses on dogs, the first domesticated animal and, as such, a continuous associate, if not a real component, of human society. From a chronological perspective, this study devotes much attention to the ancient world, when the basic principles of religion and philosophy were discussed and eventually established. 1 These thematic and chronological demarcations allow some responses to the intriguing attitudes of human beings toward their most faithful friends among the nonhuman habitants on earth.
