Meet Ancient Peru's own Grumpy Cat
By Madeleine Johnson at 5:00 am Wed, Jul 31, 2013
Grumpy Cat, Shocked Cat, Lil Bub – their images are the currency of the web, passed between friends, family, and co-workers. When they go viral, funny cat pictures heal daily drudgery with a dose of furry, cuddly cheer. But, in terms of the reverence they receive, these cats are hardly the first of their kind. Ancient cultures had cat memes too, and archaeologists have their own term for them: feline motifs.
LEFT: Old Grumpy Cat at the American Museum of Natural History. Photo: Kevin Wiley. RIGHT: Andean cats. (TOP RIGHT: Antonio Nuñez-Lemos / BOTTOM RIGHT: Jim Sanderson)
The word meme, itself a meme, feels ultra-modern, but was coined in the 1970s by Richard Dawkins to refer to any non-genetic unit of replicated information. And it would be chronocentric to presume this term applied only to the proverbial Caturdays following its contemporary articulation. Some archaeologists, known as evolutionary archaeologists, incorporate memetics into their explanations of cultural transmission and change. In their view, cultural evolution, or the speciation of different cultures, happens by selective forces acting on cultural memes, motifs and styles.
We can look back about two thousand years and see cat memes on objects made in the Americas before Columbus set boot here. In fact, the feline motif is a powerful point of acccess to Pre-Columbian cultures, as it was a common from the Mississippi to the tip of South America.
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Constanza Napolitano, Lilian Villalba and Eliseo Delgado with Sombrita, the first Andean cat ever captured. Courtesy of Jim Sanderson.
Read more at http://news.mongabay.com/2008/0928-wcn_interview_mauro.html#zH9VSJmD44jKKBY1.99