A large team of researchers examined the DNA of well-preserved cats located near human sites dating back 10,000 years. They found that the oldest specimens were not closely related to the cats we call pets today, while the lineage that gave rise to domestic cats may have reached Europe only 2,000 years ago. These findings debunk the popular theory of when cats first became domesticated, but raise further questions about how exactly this happened.
“The new study makes a very strong case that domestic cats did not arrive in Europe until the last few thousand years,” Jonathan Losos, an evolutionary biologist at Washington University in St. Louis who was not affiliated with the study, told Gizmodo.
The cat’s confusing origins
domestic cat (felis catus) is a descendant of the still extant African wildcat (felis lybica,
Today’s cats are physically and behaviorally similar to their ancestors, unlike dogs, which can behave and look quite different from their wolf relatives. Some of this difference depends on the length of time spent with these animals, respectively, as dogs were domesticated very early in our history, possibly around 20,000 years ago. But part of it also has to do with the nature of our relationship with these animals.
Long ago, people deliberately bred dogs to perform various tasks, while early cats formed mutually beneficial arrangements with humans, evolving a bit to better tolerate our presence as well as eat nearby rodents and insects and eventually become our adorable companions. Given this, it is no surprise that many scientists consider cats to be semi-domesticated, or rather, cats basically domesticated themselves.
Because cats have not changed physically much from their wild ancestors, it has been difficult for scientists to pinpoint when they first became domesticated, and this has led to competing theories about their origins.
One theory argues that domestication began about 10,000 years ago in the Levant, a region of West Asia along the eastern Mediterranean Sea. An important piece of evidence for this hypothesis is the relatively recent discovery of cat bones buried with a person at an archaeological site located in Cyprus. Other evidence suggests that Neolithic farmers from Anatolia, the peninsula covering much of modern Turkey, moved to Europe about 6,000 years ago and brought domestic cats to Europe for the first time.
The more traditional hypothesis holds that the domestication of cats actually began about 4,000 years ago in ancient Egypt, a time when cats were apparently revered as superior creatures to the creatures we know, and spread from there.
a genetic excavation
To help settle this heated debate, researchers used ancient DNA and analyzed it with relatively new genetic sequencing techniques.
“Ancient DNA acts as a time machine and can be used to track changes associated with domestication over time and help pinpoint the origins of domesticated species and their movements mediated by humans,” study authors Claudio Ottoni and Marco De Martino told Gizmodo in an email. “In addition, novel sequencing technologies make it possible to analyze complete genome data even in ancient samples.”
The team reconstructed the genomes of 70 ancient cats collected from samples in North Africa, Europe and Anatolia. These cats lived between the 9th century BC and the 19th century AD. Were between. They also analyzed the genomes of modern domestic cats and wild cats to create a kind of updated family tree.
Many things came to light from his genetic excavation.
For starters, today’s cats are more closely related to the wild cats of North Africa than to the wild cats of the Levant. Second, the oldest specimens of ancestral domestic cats found in Europe date back about 2,000 years, while older cat specimens in Europe and Turkey were genetically European wild cats, or Felis SylvestrisThese populations may have interbred with African wild cats in the past, but true domestic cats may have been in the area long before that,
Although humans have interacted with and even tried to tame wild cats many times throughout our history, the team’s research shows that the true cat domestication journey did not begin in the Levant until 10,000 years ago, and it took much longer for our cats’ direct ancestors to reach Europe (and from there, the world) than anticipated.
“Our findings challenge the commonly held view of the Neolithic arrival of domestic cats in Europe, instead suggesting that they arrived several millennia later,” the authors wrote in their paper published Thursday in Science.
The researchers also looked to clear up some confusion about feral cats living on the island of Sardinia (off Italy).
They found that both ancient and modern Sardinian cats are more closely related to North African wild cats than to domestic cats. This suggests that people brought a distinct population of wild cats to the island about 2,200 years ago, separate from the larger introduction of ancestral domestic cats in Europe; This would also mean that Sardinian cats are not the wild descendants of domestic cats, as is currently widely believed.
lovely mysteries left to solve
Although the team’s findings appear strong, it is certainly possible that other researchers may decide to counter them. And they certainly don’t understand everything about the early days of the domestic cat.
For example, Losos says that while genetic evidence suggests the European introduction of cats occurred about 2,000 years ago, archaeological artifacts indicate it may be closer to 3,000 years ago.
Another issue is that while we have a lot of preserved ancient Egyptian cat mummies, it has historically been difficult to recover viable DNA from specimens of this type, and there are not many other types of cat remains from that region and time. Thus, we are still unaware of when and how the first ancestral domestic cats made their transition to domestication.
“The big remaining question is when domestication occurred; that is, when the domestic cat, felis catusevolved from its ancestor, the North African wildcat,” said Losos, who co-authored a commentary on the new study. “Answering that question requires DNA from North African, Middle Eastern and Turkish cats who lived more than two thousand years ago.”
This current study is part of an ongoing project, Project Felix, which aims to trace the origins of the domestic cat. And researchers are planning to dig even deeper into the distant past of our furry cats.
“Our aim now is to analyze ancient samples from archaeological sites in Africa, including Egyptian mummies from the Pharaonic period,” Ottoni and De Martino said.
However, as cats became humanity’s companions – or supervillains, depending on your perspective – it’s undoubtedly a relationship that remains a win-win for both species (but especially people).
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