Mongooses and Spanish History

Beginning in the 8th century AD, the region of Andalusia in southern Spain became a crossroads of cultures, Islamic, Jewish and Christian peoples together creating a blend of architecture and material culture unseen anywhere else on the planet.

The Alhambra, seen from the Generalife garden. Photo by JLCA

Much of the vibrancy of the region developed under the rule of the Berbers, an Islamic dynasty who ruled Africa north of the Sahara and most of the Iberian peninsula by the 11th and 12th dynasties. When the Berbers entered Spain, they brought with them the architecture and material culture of their North African roots, but they also brought with them some useful animals as well--camels, genets, and the mongoose.

Egyptian Mongoose

The Egyptian mongoose (Herpestes ichneumon) is a small carnivorous mammal, that lives on a diet of rabbits, rodents, birds and reptiles. This is an incredibly useful animal to have around if you have a problem with snakes, but it is currently illegal to import into the United States, and with good reason.

Egyptian Mongoose - Herpestes ichneumon, 1780 drawing by Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber. Image by Nordelch

The native habitat for the Egyptian mongoose is North Africa, where it has lived at least since the late Pleistocene. The oldest mongoose skeleton in Europe found to date is from the Nerja Cave, an archaeological site in the Andalusian region of Spain.

Nerja Cave is, oddly enough, best known for its Late Upper Pleistocene and early Holocene occupations. A complete skull of a mongoose was discovered within a deposit dated to the Chalcolithic period; a radiocarbon date on the skull and its state of preservation preservation, makes it clear that this poor old mongoose dug himself into the site deposits before dying.

The date on the skull is 885 BP +/- 40, or ca. 1000-1100 AD, sometime between the Almoravid and Almohad Berber dynasties of Andalusian Spain.

Sources

Bies, LeeAnn. 2002. Herpestes ichneumon. Animal Diversity Web. Accessed October 1, 2008.

Riquelme-Cantala, J. A., M. D. S. Vallejob, P. Palmqvist, and M. Cortés-Sánchez 2008 The oldest mongoose of Europe. Journal of Archaeological Science 35(9):2471-2473.

Zuber, Helene. 2008. A multicultural model for Europe. Spiegel on Line. Accessed October 2, 2008.

More on Mongooses and Spanish History at About

• The Berbers
• The Islamic Civilization
• Tales of Ancient India, About Hinduism
• The Alhambra, Spain for Visitors
• The Alhambra, Medieval History