The mystery of the macaw

Credit: Benjamint444

I´m not an art historian, but my subjective impression after browsing the web and looking at pictures of Roman mosaics is that the one depicted in the linked article is simply "too good". And indeed, the only source as to its provenance claims that it´s a modern forgery made in Tunisia. 

My guess is that the depiction of a blue-and-yellow macaw (a bird only found in South America) is a mistake. The Romans did depict other parrots on their mosaics, so perhaps the Tunisian forger found a picture of a macaw, thought it was nice, and used it, not realizing that this particular species can´t possibly have been known in the Roman Empire.

Unless you believe that the Roman imperial navy discovered South America 1,300 years before the conquistadors...

Not the first time I see an anachronistic parrot, btw. On the web, I found a presumably modern picture of the Hindu deity Bala Tripurasundari, in which the child goddess has a cockatoo on her shoulder, a bird not native to India! But sure, I suppose *it* could have been imported from Indonesia.       

The mystery of the macaw