Origins of the Domestic Cat
“..Domestication can be far easier to establish by the archealogical circumstances in which the bones are discovered than by the bones themselves.” --Roger A. Caras, A Celebration of Cats
Emerging from the Fertile Crescent is the first inkling of domestication in all its meaning: a settling from a wandering, rather feral life of precarious nomadism, to the establishment of a permanent homestead. The Fertile Crescent is the area that includes modern day Israel, Jordan Syria, Iraq, and part of Turkey. During the Neolithic period, rainfall was sufficient to yield a fertile land for crops and produce; hence, the area was an optimal location for the birth of agriculture. The introduction of agriculture was a vital precursor to the establishment of a settlement or secure domicile, and vice-versa. Experts suggest that groups of early hunter-gatherers eventually stabilized in certain habitats until changes in population sizes placed a demand on food; their solution was to intentionally grow more food. With the production of their food sources, populations became increasingly settled and gradually all but abandoned the hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
The development of early agricultural technologies such as methods for planting and sowing; the use of livestock for food, clothes, and labor; and the cultivation of grains, such as wheat and barley, yielded a new way of life for the settlers of the region. This new way of life was concomitant with a new view of the animals co-habitating the landscape as both resources and tools that could aid the survival of man; henceforth, man and animal became somewhat symbiotic in these early agricultural efforts. Animals provided milk, wool, labor, and meat, and included dogs, goats, pigs, sheep, cattle, and, eventually, horses and camels. In return, man removed animal from the competitive and precarious search for food that life in the wild required and supplied food, shelter and, perhaps minimally, medical care.
Domestication is sometimes defined as the manipulation of plants and/or animals by man to yield a new morphology (shape) and/or behavior and can be an unintentional result of simple human-animal or human-plant interaction; in its extreme, it is the result of aggressive breeding or genetic manipulation. Unlike many of the domesticated animals that had an obvious service to render, the partnership between cats and man is more mysterious. The most logical hypothesis is that the mice infesting grain stores attracted predators, namely wildcats; hence, mankind’s new agricultural venture brought wild mice closer to home and, subsequently, brought wildcats who were attracted to the mice. Once man recognized the utility of cats as vermin and snake hunters, the usefulness of cats for man became as “protector of the crops.” The obvious benefit to the cat was, of course, the nutritious prey. As such, a nice symbiosis between cat and man began. Such a natural symbiosis is thought to have been the first step toward the domestication of the cat: cats brave enough to exploit the resources provided indirectly by human activities were “more fit” than those cat species too reluctant to traverse human territory.
Recent genetic research on wild and domesticated cats has revealed one common ancestor for all domesticated cats: Felis sylvestris lybica (F.s. lybica), a subspecies of the African wildcat native to the Middle East, the location of the Fertile Crescent. Such findings are in contrast with the popular conception of cat domestication as having originated in Egypt. Scientists cite several advantages that F.s. lybica may have had over other wildcats, including proximity to agricultural communities and innate propensity toward tameness. These two advantages permitted the forging of a relationship with humans, one that, according to archaeological evidence, appears to be at least 9,500 years old. (Genetic studies, however, indicate that domestic cats may have split from their wild ancestors as Felis sylvestrus catus approximately 100,000-300,000 years ago!)
In 2004, a 9,500 year old cat grave was found next to a human grave on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. The feline appears to have been carefully buried parallel to the human, along with other artifacts, such as shells, jewelry, and flint. Its apparent intentional and careful burial next to the human indicates that the cat was probably a pet, thus indicating that an emotional connection between cats and humans was forged thousands of years before Bastet, the cat Goddess, emerged in Egypt. Further testing revealed that the cat was a member of Felis sylvestris, the species thought to be the ancestor of all modern domestic cat breeds. Because cats are not native to Cyprus, the presence of the cat grave suggests that humans brought cats to other areas and, hence, the diaspora of domesticated cats from a “homeland” parallels human footprints across continents. From the Fertile Crescent, to Egypt and the Orient, and out of Egypt to Greece, Rome, British Isles, and America, the history of the domestic cat mirrors our own.
Please see the Bibliography page for a list of sources used for this site.
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