Hare’s breadth: jackrabbits (and cottontails) were economically important in ancient times Sumiko Scott/Alamy Stock Photo

The trade in bunnies helped power an ancient economy. Teotihuacan, an ancient city in central Mexico, was an advanced metropolis where most people lived in apartment complexes. The city reached its peak between the first century and 550 AD. With about 100,000 residents, it was the largest urban area in the Americas at the time, of a similar scale and sophistication as other ancient centres like Alexandria and Rome.

But until now, it has been a mystery what kinds of animals supported this complex society. “One of the big puzzles for the pre-Colombian Americas has always been the lack of domesticated animals,” says David Carballo at Boston University.

Other than managing dogs and turkeys, Mesoamericans didn’t appear to have the close relationships with animals that sustained ancient peoples in Africa and Europe.


Now it seems that raising cottontails and jackrabbits may have given the city a reliable source of meat and fur. Linda Manzanilla at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City and colleagues have uncovered an apartment compound that seems to have belonged to rabbit breeders and butchers. The team found rooms littered with rabbit bones, as well as obsidian blades for butchering and for scraping skins.

The remains of baby rabbits and a low-walled room that appears to have been a pen indicate that the inhabitants were breeding and rearing the animals, Manzanilla says.

A stone rabbit sculpture on top of a household courtyard temple (see illustration below) suggests that the residents specialised in the rabbit trade.

Manzanilla ed.1993; drawing by Fernando Botas

The carbon within the rabbit bones gave another clue, says Andrew Somerville at the University of California in San Diego. Animals eating maize and other common Mexican crops like agave cactus tend to have higher levels of an isotope of carbon with an extra neutron.

Analysing the bones showed that up to 74 per cent of the animals’ diet came from human-grown foods rather than wild plants.

“This study does a great job of showing the innovations in this urban society for cultivating their own protein sources,” says Carballo. “It gives you a good idea of what regular folks were up to in this city.”

The rabbits could have served a few different uses, such as a source of meat and fur or ritual purposes, says Heather Lapham at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Michael Smith at Arizona State University in Tempe says we shouldn’t overestimate the importance of the meat, because the diet of beans and maize available at the time was already a complete protein source. “It’s not as if, ‘oh my gosh, they’re starving if they don’t get some rabbit meat.'” Still, the study gives more evidence that Teotihuacan had a highly organised economy with specialised workers, Smith says.

Palatial housing

The city’s tradespeople, like the rabbit butchers, were well off. Nearly everyone lived in large multifamily apartment buildings that would have matched royal palaces in other ancient cities. “I don’t know of any other ancient society where the bulk of the population lived in such luxury,” he says.

There’s also a conspicuous lack of royal tombs or paintings of powerful leaders amid the city’s abundant murals, says Carballo. This suggests that there were no kings; instead, government was probably a more collective affair.

It seems one of the ancient city’s traditions remains. “Some of the delicacies of the Teotihuacan valley today involve rabbit,” says Carballo. “It continues to be an important food for the area.”

Journal reference: PLoS One, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0159982

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