GRONINGEN, THE NETHERLANDS—According to a statement released by Antiquity, analysis of pigeon bones from the site of Hala Sultan Tekke, a harbor city on the island of Cyprus, suggests that the birds (Columba livia) were semidomesticated as early as 1400 B.C. This is about 1,000 years earlier than was previously thought based on the remains of domesticated pigeons unearthed in Greece. Pigeons are known to have provided companionship, meat, and fertilizer. “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," said Anderson Carter of the University of Groningen. Isotope analysis...