Mark Wagner - Yet Another Blog

Cats have a long history with humans. Surprisingly, cats have been associated with humans for an estimated 9,500 years. The carefully buried remains of a human and a cat were found with polished stones, seashells, and other decorative artifacts in a grave believed to be roughly 9,500 years old. The grave site was located on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. This find predates early Egyptian art depicting cats by 4,000 years or more. This find smashed the long held belief that cats were domesticated by the Egyptians. However, cats are not native to Cyprus, an island 43 miles south of mainland Turkey. This leads researchers to believe that humans introduced cats to the island.

From what I have found it is fairly hard for researchers to accurately determine when cats became domesticated animals. Most of the evidence found with respect to domestication comes from ancient Egypt. It is now believed that some 10,000 years ago, somewhere in the Near East, a species of wildcat went into a village of early human settlers. The rodents that infested the settlers’ homes and granaries were sufficient prey. The cat earned its keep by killing the rodents and keeping the food from being overrun, so the humans tolerated the wildcat. Unlike other domestic animals, which were tamed by people, cats probably domesticated themselves, which could account for the independence of their descendants.

DNA analysis have detected the domestic cat’s ancestors back to the Fertile Crescent (Egypt-Israel-Mesopotamia (today Iraq)-Syria-Cyprus). The Middle Eastern wild ancestors still wander through the deserts of the area. This wild breed seems to have originated in a population that lived between 70,000 and 100,000 years ago, producing the genetic lineage that eventually included all domestic cats.

The 5 breeds of wildcats that still roam around, which are believed to be the ancestors of the domestic cat are the following:

Central Asian wildcat, Chinese Desert wildcat, European wildcat, Near-East wildcat, and South-African wildcat

(Click on the images to expand)

When scientists sampled a thousand wild and domestic cats, the gene sampling showed that the domestic cat was closest to the Near-East wildcat. This doesn’t mean that all domestic cats came from the Near-East wildcat, but it suggests strongly that a large number of domesticated cats came from this species.

By 500 BC the Greeks had acquired domestic cats, and spread cats throughout their sphere of influence. The Romans introduced the domestic cat to Britain by 300 AD. The first domestic cats in North America arrived with the colonists and again, they were brought over to keep the rodent population under control. Domestic cats have now been introduced around the world, mostly by the colonists from Europe.

Today cats are now part of the main. While some are still used to control the populate of rodents on farms, most now have become indoor pets keeping us entertained and giving us companionship. And on top of that, we now have websites dedicated to funny cat pictures. You can thank those humans 10,000 years ago who domesticated them, or you wouldn’t have pictures like this.