Ancient Native Americans May Have Had

Pet Bobcat
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.
Perri found the ancient bobcat while doing her Ph.D. research on ancient dog burials. While
going through collections from the Illinois State Museum, she found the skeleton of what was
marked as a dog wearing a collar of bear teeth, shells and other items.
The initial discovery wasn't completely surprising; dogs were domesticated by the Hopewell
culture, and archaeologists often found dogs buried at their settlements. However, dogs were

typically buried in the village perimeters, not within the burial mounds themselves, she
added.
Surprise creature
When Perri took a closer look at the skeleton, she found a surprise: sharp, shearing teeth.
"The way that cats and dogs eat meat is quite different," Perri told Live Science. "Cats kind
of tear and shred at the meat. And as soon as I saw the teeth, I knew immediately it was a cat
of some kind."
To identify the specific cat, she and her colleagues pored over a catalog of local animal
skeletons housed at the museum. They soon found a modern bobcat specimen that, just like
the ancient cat, had a mix of baby and adult teeth. The modern bobcat was about 5 to 7
months old, which suggested the ancient cat was also around that age.
"That age is a really critical age," Perri said.
At 5 months, bobcats are weaned, and they may chase small prey, such as lizards and birds,
but their moms are still bringing them most of the meat they eat, Perri said. By the time
they're 7 months old, most bobcats begin to go out on their own, she added.
Well-loved creature
It's still a mystery exactly why the ancient bobcat which was about the size of a large, fullgrown house cat was buried with the care and effort typically afforded to humans.
But the simplest explanation is that ancient people had bonded with the animal. Bobcats,
especially at a young age, are extremely cute and easy to tame, Perri said.
"It's quite possible they found the bobcat either orphaned, or they killed the mother and they
took it home and attempted to raise it," Perri said.
They may not have provided it with the food it needed, and maybe that's how it died, Perri
speculated. While the bobcat could have been a child's pet, adults must have initiated or at
least approved of the burial, as the mound was big enough that a child couldn't have dug
the grave on his or her own, Perri said.
The team was planning to analyze chemicals in the bones to learn more about what the
ancient wild kitty ate and where it came from. But, because the governor of Illinois is
planning to shut down the Illinois State Museum, where the remains are housed, the
researchers may not get a chance to do any further analysis, Perri said.
The findings were published in the Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology. (Source Live
Science)