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Where do pet cats come from? Scientists finally solve mystery
New genomic evidence traces domestic cats back to North Africa — and shows they only arrived in Europe around 2,000 years ago
A new genetic analysis has dramatically altered our understanding of the domestic cat's journey. Science published a new research using nuclear DNA evidence that says modern house cats (Felis catus) descended from wildcats native to North Africa and not the Near East, as previously believed.
Researchers discovered that the earliest evidence of true domestic cats in Europe dates only about 2,000 years ago, during the Roman Empire, rather than alongside Neolithic farmers 6,000–7,000 years ago, after sequencing the genomes of 70 ancient cats from 97 archaeological sites spanning 10,000 years across Europe, Africa, and Anatolia.
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Why did cats become our companions?
Researches were conducted on the dominant theory that held that cats were domesticated around 9,500–10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent. The domestication emerged as early farmers who attracted rodents and consequently wildcats helped protect grain stores.
The new study shows those early “farmyard cats” in Europe were in fact native wildcats (Felis silvestris), not direct ancestors of today’s lap cats.
The credit for the major dispersal of domestic cats aligns with the rise of Mediterranean maritime trade and the expansion of the Roman Empire. Cats, prized for their rodent-hunting abilities, especially on grain ships, may have been transported across North Africa, Sardinia and into mainland Europe.
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The story of domestication is complex
Domestication was not a single, simple event, as per the new study. The domestication is a complex process that involves multiple regions.
Let us begin in the beginning. North Africa did emerge as the primary source in the new study, but genetic and archaeological data in early studies had pointed to the Near East and even ancient Egypt. Previous mitochondrial-DNA studies had also traced domestic cats back to wildcats in the Near East (Felis silvestris lybica), associated with early farming communities.
It wasn't always evident, though, if these cats qualified as "domesticated."
The authors of the new study say, "This is due to a variety of factors, including the paucity of felid remains in archaeological contexts, the difficulty of assigning species and domestication status to skeletal elements [because wild and domesticated forms overlap in size and morphology], and the limited number of ancient and modern genomes analyzed so far. As a result, present hypotheses regarding when, where, and how cats were domesticated are poorly supported by empirical evidence."
Early cat domestication came from two known centers:
- The Neolithic Levant region approximately 9,500 years ago, and
- Pharaonic Egypt approximately 3,500 years ago.
The remains of a cat interred next to a human provide evidence of domestication in the Levant. On the other hand, there is a wealth of evidence of cat domestication in ancient Egyptian society, from depictions of cats consuming food close to people to mummified cat corpses.
The new study examined the genomes of 17 contemporary wildcats from Italy, Bulgaria, and North Africa, 70 ancient cats from historic sites in Europe and Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) spanning the previous 11,000 years.
The findings show that, contrary to popular belief, Neolithic farmers did not bring modern cats to Europe until approximately 2000 years ago. According to analysis, modern domestic cats are more closely linked to African wildcats than to Levantine cats.
Mysteries remain
The fact that all domestic cats today are descended from North African wildcats highlights how a relatively small population spread across continents in just over two millennia with the help of human movement and trade.
It is still to be noted that while ancient cats appear in human-associated burials as early as 7,500 BCE on islands like Cyprus, genetic evidence so far shows those cats probably were not direct ancestors of modern housecats.
The authors point out that additional information from Egypt and other areas would be helpful in identifying source populations, even though this study aids in determining the origins of contemporary domestic cats.
