A 16,500-year-old cemetery with human remains — buried alongside those of a red fox — suggests humans may have had a soft spot for the animals well before dogs became man’s best friend.

The site at ‘Uyun al-Hammam in northern Jordan is the earliest known formal burial ground in the Middle East, pre-dating other cemeteries in the region by a few millennia, scientists from Canada and the UK report in a new study published in PLoS ONE.

“This may be the earliest known cemetery period,” Edward Banning, an anthropologist at the University of Toronto who is leading the excavations, told me today. “It probably depends on what you mean by cemetery.”

Cool stuff, but in short order the ghost hunter geek in us rises to the surface and asks, “Could we try an EVP to hear they language these people spoke?”

Is that a silly question?

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Masonic Cemetery 1

We met up with some friends a couple of weeks ago to do a sunset walkthrough of the Masonic Cemetery just outside Central City, CO  - didn’t break out all the gear, just still cameras and my digital voice recorder. (We’d spent that day rafting, so this was going to be a short investigation…)

We’d been told that the place is active with EVP’s, thought we’d give it a shot.

Masonic Cemetery 2

The cemetery itself is one Central City’s smaller, and older, cemeteries. It is perched high above the so-called “Central City Highway”, a newly built two lane road that connects the gambling town to I70, so on a Saturday evening, there’s a fair bit of road noise.

We caught two possible EVP’s here – neither high quality but worthy of note.

On this one, you can hear a muffled male voice right after I say “talk to me” – the selection is very short and the response really isn’t audible. At this time, only Sharon and I were in the cemetery.

This second possible EVP seems to have a female voice saying “yes” immediately after I say “greet me this evening”, and before I clear my throat…very fast.