On the periphery of Zamárdi, an ancient lakeshore settlement in west-central Hungary, archaeologists uncovered a nearly five-foot-deep beehive-shaped pit with the skeletons of), a notoriously shy creature. The feline’s bones were radiocarbon dated to the mid-fifth to mid-sixth century A.D.—the Migration Period, during which various tribes invaded Roman provinces, ultimately leading to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. “Finding a complete lynx skeleton is special because not many have been discovered in archaeological contexts,” says zooarchaeologist László Bartosiewicz of Stockholm University. “Humans definitely buried this lynx, but we have little idea why or how they came into contact with the animal.”
