In the last two classes, we moved from the Ancient Near East to Greece and Italy. Greek and Latin texts provide a wealth of human-animal relationships, everything from dogs and falcons to bees and cicadas. Several tombstones with inscriptions about favorite dogs were particularly touching.
One unusual video described and illustrated how Roman soldiers trapped and transported animals from all over the Roman Empire and sent them to the Colosseum in Rome.
In the last lecture, we sampled some South American animals (the fox, depicted in temple art of Peru and in the night sky as a constellation) and different kinds of camelid (llama, alpaca, guanaco, etc)
We finished with North America, especially our own state of Illinois, with dog and cat burials particularly this charming bobkitten who was buried with "pomp and circumstance" in the form of a shell necklace.
Illustration by K. Farnsworth, ISAS