Today cats are considered to be an integral part of home life. But it wasn't always like this! Where and when did the first wild cat that became domestic lived? The answer to this question still causes a lot of controversy among scientists.
One of the main questions is why the domestication of cats took place at all. Ancient people needed animals for milk, wool, meat, but nothing of this can be obtained from a cat. True, she is a natural enemy of rodents, which cannot but rejoice farmers, but recent archaeological discoveries show that the domestication of cats is older than agriculture. Probably, the cats themselves began to settle next to a human dwelling, where there were a lot of scraps, which means there were a lot of mice and rats. This allowed ancient people to observe cats and appreciate their merits.
However, there was in history another way of using cats in the household. In ancient Egypt, which was traditionally considered the historical homeland of domestic cats, they were used to hunt birds in the reeds, as hunting dogs are now used. Perhaps the oldest "profession" of the domestic cat was just that.
Where do domestic cats come from?
For a long time it was believed that modern domestic cats descended from a small population that existed in Ancient Egypt, but there was no evidence of this, because wild cats are equally difficult to distinguish from each other and from domestic tiger-colored counterparts. Only genetics could give the final answer.
And at the beginning of the XXI century, English scientists K. Driscoll and S. O'Brien conducted a genetic study that made us take a fresh look at the origin of modern pets.
About 1000 genetic samples were taken from wild and domestic cats living in Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Azerbaijan, the Middle East and South Africa. In the course of the analysis, five genetic groups were identified: the Chinese mountain cat, the South African wild cat, the Asian steppe and European forest cat, and the fifth group should be specially mentioned. Along with the Middle Eastern steppe cat, it included all domestic representatives of this family that participated in the study. So that's where to look for the historical homeland of domestic cats - in the Middle East!
When were cats tamed?
The oldest domestic cat known to scientists lived on the island of Cyprus 9.50 thousand years ago. It was a nine-month-old kitten buried next to a human grave - apparently, its owner rested in it. Why were the man and the cat buried together? This could manifest religious worship, the cat could be considered the same property as sea shells and stone tools, which are also in this grave, or maybe the person simply loved his cat very much, and the relatives decided that he would feel bad without her in the other world the world is now impossible to establish. But one thing is clear: there are no wild cats in Cyprus, this animal could only get there together with a person! Perhaps they were brought to Cyprus from the Levantine coast.
This allows us to conclude that, 9, 5 thousand years ago, cats were already tamed, and quite a long time ago, since they were looked at not only as useful animals, but also as an object of adoration and even reverence. This attitude could have arisen from a long tradition of keeping cats.
So, most likely the very first cats that were tamed by man lived in the Middle East about 10 thousand years ago.
