Studies of the bones of dogs, large cats, turkeys, and other animals found in the Maya city of Ceibal show that, as early as 400 BCE, the Mayan elite were importing dogs from distant corners of Guatemala and raising large cats like jaguars in captivity, probably all for use in elaborate rituals at the pyramids in the center of the city.

“Animal trade helped sustain many large civilizations, such as the Romans in Europe, the Inca Empire in South America, the Mesopotamians in the Middle East, and the ancient Chinese dynasties,” said archaeologist Ashley Sharpe of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, who led the study. But at Ceibal, the imported animals seem to have served purely ceremonial or political purposes, which may have played an important role in the growth of the powerful Maya state.

Captive jaguar

The work is based on discoveries at a pyramid near the ceremonial center of Ceibal, an important Maya city in what is now Guatemala (the city is also known as Seibal and El Ceibal). Archaeologists found the jawbone of a large cat—probably a jaguar—mixed in with ancient construction fill. A jawbone doesn’t sound like much, but it’s enough to let archaeologists reconstruct what the animal ate and where it came from. The ratio of stable carbon isotopes stored in the bone, for example, can tell researchers whether the animal or its prey ate a lot of grain or foraged on more woody plants in the forests around Ceibal, while nitrogen isotope ratios reveal the amount of protein in the animal’s diet.

The Ceibal cat, it turns out, had spent most of its life eating animals that had, in turn, eaten mostly maize. According to Sharpe and her colleagues, that means the cat was probably raised in captivity to play a role in Maya religious ceremonies. Although it’s impossible to say for sure, the cat probably was a live participant in the ceremony as opposed to a ritual sacrifice itself.

“There is Maya art from later time periods, about 800 to 900 CE, of Maya kings holding live jaguar cubs as part of a ceremony, and occasionally jaguars are seen in art alive and in ceremonies, so I suspect the wild cat in this study was raised to be brought out in ceremonial demonstrations, similar to the live jaguar that was brought out onstage during the last Brazil Olympics, during the torch ceremony,” said Sharpe.

The cat was probably raised in the home of one of Ceibal’s early social elites. Strontium isotope ratios in the jawbone match those in the local rocks and soil around Ceibal, so the cat was local, and certainly no one but the upper class could have afforded to raise a jaguar.

Radiocarbon dating indicates that the cat died around 400 BC, during what historians call the Preclassic period of Maya civilization. A new ruling class was just beginning its rise to power, but that power wouldn’t coalesce into the hands of kings and a centralized state government for another 600 years. Keeping a large wild feline in captivity and then trotting it out for a religious ceremony would have been a great demonstration of power for some up-and-coming Maya noble.

Earlier studies at Teotihuacan in central Mexico found large cats that appeared to have been raised in captivity and then killed during rituals there. But the Ceibal bones are the first evidence for captive-reared big cats in Maya territory.

Imported dogs

Not only were the early Maya raising large wild cats in captivity; they were also transporting dogs across great distances for religious ceremonies. In construction fill in two large pyramids near Ceibal’s ceremonial center, archaeologists found the remains of two dogs with strontium isotope ratios that didn’t match the local geology. Both had eaten mostly grain, which was unusual compared to other dogs found in less conspicuous parts of the city. It looks like the two dogs had been raised in more distant parts of Guatemala and then ended up in pyramids at Ceibal as part of a religious ritual.

As with the cat, it’s hard to say whether the dogs were sacrificed or played some live role in the proceedings, but things certainly look much grimmer for the dogs. Mayan art from the Classic Period (around 200 to 950 CE), depicts dogs being fattened for both ritual sacrifice and consumption, and Spanish colonizers’ accounts record those activities as well. We just don’t have any evidence for how these particular dogs died.

Although the dogs found in the pyramid were likely part of a ritual in some way, dogs were also a normal part of Maya society; they lived in people’s houses, helped them hunt, and generally did what dogs have done for thousands of years. Their bones show up all over Maya sites in houses from all social classes.

“Modern Maya use hunting dogs and have for generations, so we believe that it is likely the [pre-Columbian] Maya had them as well,” said Sharpe. “There is one dog in our study that seems to be eating a low-corn, high-meat diet based on its carbon and nitrogen isotopes, and we suspect that may have been a hunting dog, although it is difficult to say for certain.”

Sharpe and her colleagues tested the bones of 26 dogs from around Ceibal, and only two had been raised elsewhere. Both had been fed much more grain than other dogs in the city, and both turned up in large pyramids in the city’s ceremonial center. Sharpe says that’s not a coincidence.

“I suspect certain dogs were more important than others, including possibly different breeds,” said Sharpe. “These two were probably ‘special’ because they came from so far away and might have been gifts or belonged to someone important who traveled across Guatemala.”

One of the dogs came from Guatemala’s volcanic highlands and the other from the foothills of central Guatemala, according to the strontium isotope data. Their presence at Ceibal mirrors what we know of ancient Maya trade routes, which were already active during the Preclassic period.

“Since obsidian blades were imported to Ceibal from the highlands via the foothills during the Preclassic period, these dogs may have been exchanged along that trade network, either as gifts or as pets belonging to humans travelling on this route,” wrote Sharpe and her colleagues.

The two dogs at Ceibal provide the earliest evidence so far of live-animal trading in the Americas.

“This study shows that dogs were being transported over 100 miles across Guatemala as far back as 400 BC, which means that animals were moving across the landscape with their human owners a lot more frequently than we originally believed,” said Sharpe.

Garden hunting

The Maya seem to have taken longer to domesticate animals for more mundane purposes. The first grain-fed turkeys don’t show up in the archaeological record until after 200 CE, during the Classic Period, when turkey domestication seems to have spread south from Mexico into Maya lands. In the meantime, many lower- and middle-class households in Ceibal probably survived in part by hunting animals, like peccaries and deer, that came to forage in their grain fields.

Most other animals found at Ceibal, including deer, peccaries, and a possum, appear to have diets indicating that they were from the forests around the city. Two of the peccaries showed signs of diets rich in grain, but they may have spent their lives foraging in the grain fields around Ceibal rather than being fed in captivity.

Sharpe says there are still plenty of questions to answer about how the ancient Maya were trading and using captive animals.

“I’m very interested to expand this study to more animals at other sites, as well as in the highland area of Guatemala, in order to get a sense of where animals were traded (and not) and how extensive the network was,” said Sharpe.

PNAS, 2017. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1713880115 (About DOIs).