Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/10/21/massive-2000-year-old-etching-of-cat-found-on-peruvian-hillside.html
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Also looks like a Red Panda. Maybe it hitchhiked there from Asia.
Red Panda would be a good Marvel superhero. His power would be overwhelming cuteness.
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I’m not an expert on Incan or Pre-Incan peoples, but they probably made that by drawing an outline around a sleeping cat. As they clear more, they’ll probably discover a giant keyboard too
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Check the surrounding hills for a mouse.
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Well, “cat” as in feline creature, which there are numerous species in South America, but I’m pretty sure pre-Columbian peoples didn’t have cat cats as in Felis domesticus.
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Yep, it’s definitely not a domesticated cat. It may be a mythical cat-like creature and not an attempt to draw a real animal at all. Here’s a recent BoingBoing post on unrealistic animal drawings: https://boingboing.net/2020/10/09/medieval-paintings-of-animals-that-look-nothing-like-real-animals-because-the-artist-had-never-seen-them.html
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Thanks to Aggretsuko, I know not to mess with red pandas.
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Odd how it was just found but there happens to be a well worn path with stairs up along the side of it…
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You’re saying the cat meme has been done already?
exits Paint without saving
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I should watch my son’s anime more often. The Japanese are strange.
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It’s on Netflix. Third season already. The episodes are only 15 minutes long. You can binge the series in a weekend with plenty of time to spare.
My wife loves the series because it gets many eccentric aspects of Japanese office/social life right. (1st season especially).
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But a red panda singing death metal? They’re so adorable. I mean, that’s like Mrs. Cunningham on Happy Days throwing off her apron, jumping on the back of Fonzie’s bike and dancing go-go at the biker bar.
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Dammit. How did you describe my inner fantasies so well and in such detail?!?!
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The creators* of the etches figured out that extraterrestrials weren’t at all interested in humans, so they started offering up their house cats.
*edited many times because I really have no clue who made the lines and didn’t take the time to research people’s theories… I’ll see myself out.
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Gotta wonder if there was some way stories about cats from Egypt made it that far. My theory is the Egyptians tried to warn people about letting them move from the grain silos into the house, but it got lost in translation. 
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Isn’t this just a case of pandering to cat lovers?
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Oh, there were definitely felines in the Americas before the European conquest. They are one of the most important animal symbols across cultures and millennia on both continents (along with large raptors). I just meant this one might be like an Olmec werejaguar or an Anishinaabek underwater panther, not a bad attempt at a puma. (Like a unicorn Pegasus isn’t a horse). Though, having seen the ceramics of the Nazca region, it could easily be a terribly drawn puma.
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Maybe they were all in the service of Naomi Kritzer’s cat-loving AI http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kritzer_01_15/
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I’ve seen varying accounts on when cats were domesticated there, and this BB post on another feline work of art was a good one!
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