An Archaeological Discovery That Shed Light on the Domestication of Cats
The earliest known evidence for the domestication of wild cats into the common household cat, until recently, dated to Ancient Egypt, about 4000 years ago. That changed with new archaeological discoveries that indicate that cats were probably first domesticated in China. Feline bones unearthed in the Chinese agricultural village of Quanhucun, in Shaanxi, reveal that cats lived there alongside humans, about 5300 years ago. Archaeological evidence unearthed in Quanhucun and surrounding villages indicates that the domestication of cats began when farmers’ grains attracted rodents.
There is a twist to the tale: wild cats lived alongside and amidst humans for thousands of years, before they were domesticated. DNA analysis shows that throughout those millennia of coexistence that preceded domestication, there was very little alteration in the wild cats’ genes. Attracted by the relative abundance of rodents in and around human agricultural communities, wild cats deliberately sought out human communities and the tasty rodents therein. It was only after thousands of years wild cats living alongside humans and preying upon the rodents that infested human crops, that they changed. Eventually, there was enough genetic variation between wild cats that lived alongside humans and those still out in the wild, that we ended up with the common tabby.