Feline geoglyph found in Perú/Nazca Cat

[betsygee]

MOD NOTE: We had three different threads going about this topic so we've merged them all into one.

Isn't that amazing? I read about its discovery this morning. I didn't know about the Paracas people. Cats were important to their culture because they kept the insects and rodents out of their fields.

 

[aliceneko]

So interesting! It seems that cats were important in many cultures, and they certainly haven't forgotten this

 

[Antonio65]

A 2,000 years old cat has been recently discovered in Peru.
Actually it's a carving on a hillside, one of those famouse Nazca figures.

Nazca Lines Peru Cat

I wonder how such a huge and clearly visible figure could go unnoticed for so a long time.

 

[di and bob]

Absolutely stunning! I think it is humans getting much better at finding different ways to uncover treasures like this. Such as 3 D imaging. Take that, dogs.....cats rule!

 

[doomsdave]

I ran across this and it's fascinating, though I'm not sure that the "New World" peoples were into domestic cats like in the "Old World."

That said, the elegant simplicity is quite striking; if it's not a cat, I can't imagine what it could be. That languid pose is perfectly captured on a huge scale. One wonders why the people who did it went to the trouble.

2,000-Year-Old Cat Etching Found at Nazca Lines Site in Peru

Archaeologists stumbled across the faded etching while remodeling a section of a UNESCO heritage site known as the Nazca Lines, Peru’s Ministry of Culture announced last week.

The catlike geoglyph — which experts say dates to 200 B.C. to 100 B.C. — is the latest discovery among the carvings of larger-than-life animals and plants previously found between the towns of Nazca and Palpa, in a desert plain about 250 miles southeast of the capital, Lima.

“The discovery shows, once again, the rich and varied cultural legacy of this site,” the ministry said in a statement.

The Nazca Lines were first discovered by a Peruvian aerial surveyor in 1927. Images of a hummingbird, a monkey and an orca were unearthed at the site. UNESCO has designated the Lines and Geoglyphs of Nasca and Palpa a World Heritage Site since 1994.

 

[Willowy]

Yeah, probably a jaguar; I don't think they had domestic cats in the area yet. Very cool!

One wonders why the people who did it went to the trouble.

Why does any art exist? There wasn't a lot to do in your free time back then . No Netflix or video games.

 

[doomsdave]

Yeah, probably a jaguar; I don't think they had domestic cats in the area yet. Very cool!

Why does any art exist? There wasn't a lot to do in your free time back then . No Netflix or video games.

True, though that must have been a monumental undertaking.

Looks much too cuddly to be a jag, though it could also be some other kind of cat.

Thinking about it, those "Indians" had a system of agriculture that was supposedly quite productive. Though, on the other hand, I've heard that hunter gatherers have more free time.

 

[Kieka]

They were made by the Nazca peoples who were there for several hundred years from approximately 100BC to 750 AD. They practiced advanced agriculture, including aqueducts and underground irrigation. To the degree that deforestation to allow more agriculture might have contributed to their downfall when flooding occurred in the area wiping out their crops. While there was one large cat in the form of the jaguar, South America also has 10 smaller cat but no know cat domestication in the region.

 

[bengalcatman]

In a few thousand years someone is going to look back at the internet of our time period and discover all the cat content. They will likely start a thread like this on whatever sort of media they have....

"It was a world that had progressed to using fossil fuels and early physics based power. Wars were common and diseased still accounted for a large portion of all morbidity. Fascinated by cats, these early people utilized their newly discovered interconnected computational systems to disseminate millions of cat pictures and stories."

To these people of the future.... our cat forum will look just like that image carved into the hillside

 

[Willowy]

South America also has 10 smaller cat but no know cat domestication in the region.

Pampas cats! I forgot about them. They're adorable, and probably somewhat tameable. There's one at the zoo who will "talk" to me every time I see him . So not quite domesticated but tame enough to hunt the fields while humans were around.

 

[Kieka]

Pampas cats! I forgot about them. They're adorable, and probably somewhat tameable. There's one at the zoo who will "talk" to me every time I see him . So not quite domesticated but tame enough to hunt the fields while humans were around.

Probably would have become domesticated given more time, might even still become at some point in the future. There were a lot of domesticated dogs, llamas, guinea pigs, ducks, turkey and (less evidence to support but highly assumed) two types of insects in the Americas. The insects being kept and bred to make wax and dyes.

 

[ZombieTiger]

I don't know anything about this, but if it's not a cat could it be some kind of small fox? I know some people in South South America/Argentina used a fox, though I can't remember what for right now.

Edit: I was thinking of Fuegian Dog

Fuegian dog - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org