Turns Out, Cats Were Domesticated More Recently Than We Thought
My cat sleeps on my face. By this I mean, we snuggle up in bed and she snoozes with her little head rested directly on my face. It’s ridiculous. I both treasure it entirely and know that we are absolutely pathetic in our sleepy codependency.
It’s so strange to think that her ancestors were wild and that they didn’t need to be on a SPECIFIC part of a human’s bed to sleep through the night.
When we speak about the domestication of cats, we speak as if it was 10,000 years ago and that we’ve been longtime companions with these felines. However, scientists have recently uncovered evidence that our bond doesn’t go back quite so far.
When were cats actually domesticated?
Well, a new DNA analysis of a sprawling set of ancient feline remains reveal that the precursors to modern housecats originated in North Africa and only reached Europe around 2,000 years ago.
National Geographic, who part-funded the research says: “So far, scientists have focused on Africa and the Middle East, where the wildcats that gave rise to the modern pets are found.
“Archeological finds and recent work on ancient genetics has led many researchers to hypothesize that stone age farmers domesticated cats nearly 10,000 years ago in the Middle East and brought the rodent-killing kitties along with them as they subsequently moved into Europe.”
Speaking to National Geographic, Leslie Lyons, a feline geneticist at the University of Missouri said that she thinks the new work provides a crucial data point that will help researchers crack the larger code of cat domestication in other parts of the world.
She added: “Cats are still mysterious, and they’re giving up their mysteries one whisker at a time.”
The oldest evidence of a domesticated cat was found in 2004
In what is a bittersweet mirror to the past, the oldest evidence of what appears to be a domestic cat was unearthed in 2004, when archaeologists discovered the skeleton of a cat curled up alongside the remains of a man in a tomb in Cyprus.
Everything changes but cat lovers stay curled up with their feline friends.