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It may seem a prestigious berth for a gnawer , but theguinea pigsthat are fixtures in primary schoolhouse classroom today were once ambassadors from a new country .
The third - ever ginzo hog skeleton found in a European archaeological jab confirms that these fiddling squeakers voyaged to the Old World very shortly after Spain curb Peru in 1532 . While the guinea pigs , also know as cavies , served asfood in South America , they seem to have been treated as pets in Europe . They may have even been a privilege reserved for the comparatively well - off , at least at first .
Spanish explorers brought guinea pigs back from the New World to Europe, where they were kept as exotic pets.
That was lucky news for at least one French Guinea hog whose skeleton was new unearthed in Mons , Belgium , before the construction of a parking garage in the city . Excavations uncover the current metropolis is built on top of an old village make in chivalric time . The stain where the parking service department was to be build was once a variety ofmedieval suburb — a residential district correctly outside the Ithiel Town center .
In the wine cellar of one of the well - appointed family in this district , researcher uncovered eight guinea pig clappers , in all probability all from the same creature . Because the bones were n’t spread out about , hack or gnawed upon , the archaeologist are sure-footed the critter was given a proper burial befitting a family pet , not stewed and eaten . [ 8 Grisly Archaeological discovery ]
Digging up pigs
The archeologic site date to the end of the 1500s or early 1600s , a mountain chain affirm by radiocarbon dating of the osseous tissue . ( This method acting dates fabric based on the decay rate of its radioactive carbon . ) The researcher also analyse isotopes in the cavy ’s bones , because these nuclear variants can give clues as to an animate being ’s diet . They find that the guinea fowl pig bed was belike brook and raise in Europe — no swelled surprisal , given that guinea grunter as young as 3 months can have pups , andpregnancieslast only about 65 days . It would n’t have taken long for imported pigs to go native .
Just as people today might knock down remaining salad in their guinea pig ’s John Cage , the possessor of this 400 - year - old cavy likely feed it scraps from the table , the isotope analysis suggested .
Researchers have known from diachronic texts that domesticated guinea pigs came to Europe shortly after explorersmade it to the New World . But this find is the first to be carbon 14 dated . Only two other Republic of Guinea pig skeletons have turn up in archeologic digs in Europe ( excluding modern favorite graves , of grade ) . One , from the former 1800s , seems to have been used for dissection at the Royal London Hospital . The other , which dates to 1574 or 1575 , was found at Hill Hall Manor in Essex , England . That grunter had quite the ritzy slam : The owner of the mansion , Thomas Smith , was ambassador to France . His status may have made it well-to-do to get what was then considered anexotic pet .
The spread of the cavy
But the find of a piggie pet in a middle - class family around the same metre as the other two suggests that , true to their rodent nature , dago pig engender and spread cursorily in Europe .
" The occurrent of [ a ] guinea slovenly person in a late sixteenth one C context of use of a manor house at Hill Hall , Essex , have by a member of the royal motor hotel , indicate that it was a prestigious animal , " Fabienne Pigière of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences and colleagues wrote in the forthcoming April issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science .
" However , the finds from Mons signal that the middle class was also able to buy dago bull , which could be tie in to the speedy spread of this prolific animal after its introduction in Europe , make it approachable to several classes of the population . "
