New Delhi: All modern domestic cats are descended from the African wildcat. How, when and where the domestication occurred was not clear. A team of Chinese
scientists have sequenced the remains of ancient felines from archaeological sites from Europe, Anatolia, North Africa and China spanning 5,000 years, and have determined that the cat was was domesticated somewhere in North Africa a few thousand years after the advent of agriculture in the Levant. The modern domesticated cat arrived in Europe around 2,000 years ago, and reached China only 1,400 years ago. Humans had commensal relationship with leopard cats prior to 200 CE.
The remains of felines have been found in the context of humans in archaeological sites around the world, including mummified cats in Egypt. One of the most dramatic examples is a 9,500 year old grave in Cyprus where a human was buried alongside a cat. There are no native cats on the island, so the creature had to be moved by boat. There are remains of cats in archaeological remains across Turkey, Jordan, Syria and China. The genomic research indicates that most of the felines living alongside early farming communities were wild cats, and not the modern domestic cats. A paper describing the research has been published in Cell Genomics.
Cats travelled on the Silk Road
The research transforms the understanding of human-animal relationships, particularly in East Asia. The early wild cats thrived around human settlements while hunting rodents. The Silk Road porovided a global exchange network, playing a role in the spread of animal species. The arrival of the modern domestic cat in China was part of a broader cultural and biological exchange across Europe. The earliest confirmed remains of a domestic cat is dated to between 707 and 883 AD from the Tongwan City site in Shaanxi, with maternal lineages linked to Near Eastern African wildcats. The genome reconstruction reveals that this cat had short fur, and either white or spotted colouration. Identical genetic signatures in Kazakhstan indicated that the domestic Cat reached China through the Silk Road.
