Cats are usually very independent – and a new study by British scientists has confirmed this fact once again. Experts have found that the domestication of wild cats occurred much later than previously thought, and in a different place, reports the BBC.
Scientists from the University of Oxford have studied cat bones found during archaeological excavations in different parts of the world. As a result, they found that cats established close relationships with humans only about 4,000 years ago – and this process took place in North Africa, and not in the Levant, as experts previously assumed.
“Cats are now everywhere, they make TV programs about them, and they simply rule the internet,” says Professor Greger Larsson from the University of Oxford. “But our relationship with cats began about 3,500 or 4,000 years ago, not 10,000 years ago.”
All modern cats are descended from a single species, the steppe cat (Felis lybica).
However, scientists have long struggled to determine exactly how and when they made the transition from wild to domesticated.
To solve the mystery, Oxford researchers studied DNA in cat skeletons found in Europe, North Africa, and Anatolia. They dated the bones, analyzed their DNA, and compared the results with the genetic makeup of modern cats.
It turned out that cat domestication did not begin with the agricultural revolution in the Levant, as previously thought (agriculture began to develop about 10,000 years ago). In fact, the friendship between cats and humans began several millennia later in North Africa.
“This did not happen in the region where humans first began to lead a sedentary lifestyle. Rather, it seems to be an Egyptian phenomenon,” Larsson says.
Such assumptions fit well with the attitude towards cats in ancient Egypt: its inhabitants worshipped these animals, immortalized them in art, and mummified them.
Once cats began to live alongside humans, they quickly spread throughout the world. Among other factors contributing to this was the fact that they were good at catching mice and rats, an extremely useful skill both on ships and in homes.
But cats did not appear in Europe until about 2,000 years ago—also much later than previously thought.
They crossed the entire European continent, reached Britain with the Romans, and then spread east along the Silk Road, reaching China.
Today, they can be found on every continent in the world except Antarctica.
However, there is one notable exception to this theory. Scientists have found that wild cats lived for some time in close proximity to humans in China – and this happened long before the appearance of domestic cats in the world.
These cats were wild Bengal cats – small animals with a color similar to that of leopards. They lived in human settlements in China for about 3,500 years.
As Professor Shu Jin Luo of Peking University says, the relationship between the ancient inhabitants of China and these cats was actually symbiotic, that is, these two species lived independently next to each other – and at the same time helped each other.
“Bengal cats took advantage of living among humans, and this, in principle, had no effect on humans, but they were happy to see them as natural hunters of rodents,” the scientist notes.
Bengal cats have not been domesticated and continue to live in the wild throughout Asia.
However, recently they have been crossed with domestic cats, resulting in a new breed of domestic Bengal cat, which was officially recognized in the 1980s.
The results of the study were published in the journals Science and Cell Genomics.
Illustrative Photo by Pixabay: https://www.pexels.com/photo/gray-cat-33537/
We acknowledge The European Times for the information.
