Re: Inger's 'sacred cats' are the Puma concolor

Doug Weller <dweller@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > wrote:

Aka cougar, mountain lion. Puma is the Quechua word for cougar.
That is, the Inca word.
She evidently found a cat fanciers site that said the Inca revered
sacred cats and decided that showed European influence.
An indication of the 'scholarly nature' of her research.

Yes, and this was her astonishing reply, although in the
original thread:

"If it was the so called 'pampas cat' (Felis colocolo) or
one of the cats from the Old World that Incas and their
ancestors worshiped enough to make sculptures of as
well as hugh 'pictures' in terrain, that I don't know.
How ever neither do I know where the Pampas cat had
it's ancestors. That's not enough to declare an animal
native to South America if that 'native' only stands for,
as in this case, knowledge that the cat where there
when the Spaniards arrived."

and

"As for the cats I still wonder who brought cats to the
New World. One thing is sure..... they didn't swim."

It almost made me cry.

--
p.a.

.