Ancient Native Americans May Have Had Pet Bobcat
Ancient Native Americans May Have Had Pet Bobcat
by Tia Ghose, Senior Writer | July 08, 2015 10:37am ET
A 2,000-year-old burial mound discovered in the area that's now Illinois contained the remains of a young bobcat, new research reveals.
The ancient bobcat was wearing a special collar and was found in a ritual burial mound normally reserved for humans.
"It really looked like it had been buried not because it was a feral accessory for a human, but because it was, in some way, kind of respected on its own," said study co-author Angela Perri, a zooarchaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany. [In Photos: Urban Bobcats Stroll Through American Southwest]
Large culture
The bobcat's grave was part of a burial complex made by people from the Hopewell culture, a group of ancient American people who lived across an area that now makes up several states, all the way from Ohio to Florida. While each region had slightly varying ways of life and may have spoken different languages, people from the Hopewell culture had distinctive forms of pottery and art, such as animal-shaped tobacco pipes and shiny, micalike material carved into animal shapes, Perri said. People in the Hopewell culture also lived in villages with separate ritual burial mounds, such as the gigantic graveyard outside of Cahokia, near St. Louis, she added.
More:
http://www.livescience.com/51479-bobcat-buried-like-humans.html
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Native Americans Might Have Domesticated Bobcats 2,000 Years Ago
Shaunacy Ferro
The remains of a young bobcat found in western Illinois may be early evidence of feline domestication in the Americas, according to new research.
Some 2000 years ago, a bobkitten was carefully laid to rest in a burial mound near the Illinois River wearing a necklace of bear teeth and shells. Initially thought to be a dog burial when the remains were discovered in the ‘80s, researchers affiliated with several Illinois institutions, as well as the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, recently reanalyzed the sample and now assert that it represents the first wild cat burial documented in archaeology.
The Hopewell Native Americans living in the region might have tried to tame the young bobcat, they write in the Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology, representing an ancient example of cat domestication in North America. Domestic dogs were buried at this time, but not with the ceremonial pomp this cat received. The months-old bobcat was interred by itself near several human funeral mounds, and didn’t have any marks on it to suggest the animal had been killed as a sacrifice.
Yet the researchers are unclear as to whether the animal was a pet, or merely held special significance for the Hopewell that resulted in a higher-class burial than most animals received. And even if it was a pet, that doesn't necessarily mean it was a predecessor of today's house cat. While this burial could be a sign of early efforts toward domesticating wild felines, the cat could also have been a singular outlier among a largely untamed population of bobcats. We can say for sure, though, that someone definitely liked this cat enough to give it a proper send-off.
http://mentalfloss.com/article/65977/native-americans-might-have-domesticated-bobcats-2000-years-ago
(Short article, no more at link.)
