Article
Wheeled feline
The museum received an extraordinary pre-Columbian clay whistle, in the form of a young jaguar on four wheels...from Gillett G. Griffin, [former] faculty curator of pre-Columbian and Native American art. The jaguar whistle was made in Central Veracruz, Mexico, in the Late Classic period (A.D. 600-900), and is extremely rare. In the brochure that accompanies the exhibition, John Burkhalter theorizes that the whistle was a ritual object serving as a communicative or mnemonic device and a metaphor for future rulership, with possible solar associations.
The only wheels ever found in the ancient Americas are on ceramic objects from Central Veracruz, and in the literature on pre-Columbian art they have generally been referred to as "toys." Neither Gillett Griffin nor John Burkhalter believes, however, that they were intended as toys. Shamans were thought to have a whistling language, and it is possible that many of the whistles recovered were placed in the graves of the dead to summon ancestor shamans to lead the deceased into the underworld. Why wheels were not developed for other uses, such as pottery making or transportation, is a question that remains unanswered. According to Professor Griffin, "we have no answer other than that these were very traditional and conservative peoples. Their ancestors arrived on the American continents without knowledge of animal husbandry, and here developed a variety of architectures, inventing the corbel but never conceiving of a true arch, and inventing wheels for rare ritual objects but not for transport."
For the Olmec, the primal Mesoamerican civilization, the jaguar was the most symbolically powerful creature in their world, a focus for the fusion of the natural and the supernatural. The jaguar whistle from Central Veracruz... demonstrate[s] how later cultures maintained the prominence of the jaguar in their beliefs and iconography.
The only wheels ever found in the ancient Americas are on ceramic objects from Central Veracruz, and in the literature on pre-Columbian art they have generally been referred to as "toys." Neither Gillett Griffin nor John Burkhalter believes, however, that they were intended as toys. Shamans were thought to have a whistling language, and it is possible that many of the whistles recovered were placed in the graves of the dead to summon ancestor shamans to lead the deceased into the underworld. Why wheels were not developed for other uses, such as pottery making or transportation, is a question that remains unanswered. According to Professor Griffin, "we have no answer other than that these were very traditional and conservative peoples. Their ancestors arrived on the American continents without knowledge of animal husbandry, and here developed a variety of architectures, inventing the corbel but never conceiving of a true arch, and inventing wheels for rare ritual objects but not for transport."
For the Olmec, the primal Mesoamerican civilization, the jaguar was the most symbolically powerful creature in their world, a focus for the fusion of the natural and the supernatural. The jaguar whistle from Central Veracruz... demonstrate[s] how later cultures maintained the prominence of the jaguar in their beliefs and iconography.
