Two new studies have uncovered fresh clues about when and where cats were first domesticated – and the findings point squarely at ancient Egypt. But rather than cosy companions or handy pest controllers, early domestic cats may have been bred for one purpose: mass sacrifice.
Previously, researchers believed that the cat’s domestication began when wildcats started loitering around the first farming villages more than 9,000 years ago.
As grain stores attracted rodents, North African wildcats (Felis lybica) began to hunt the vermin, sparking a mutually beneficial relationship that eventually led to domestication.
But that model is now under serious scrutiny. “It is often said that the wild progenitor of the domestic cat – the North African wildcat – was domesticated during the Neolithic,” Dr Sean Doherty, an archaeological scientist at the University of Exeter and lead author of the first study, told BBC Science Focus.
“Our study challenges this narrative by reviewing the available osteological [bone], genetic and iconographic evidence. We argue that domestication of the cat began in Egypt around the second to first millennium BC.”
Doherty’s team used zooarchaeological analysis, genetics and radiocarbon dating to reassess ancient cat remains from archaeological sites across Europe and North Africa, dating from ancient to modern. Bones from a 9,500-year-old farming village in Cyprus, once thought to show early domestication, were found to more closely resemble wildcats.
Some misdating may have been due to the fact that cat bones are small and can shift between soil layers over time, Doherty said. “So we used radiocarbon dating to confirm their dates. This too showed that some cats were considerably more recent than they were believed to be.”
All this suggests the timeline of when cats were domesticated is actually more recent than thought.
The researchers argue that while rodent control likely played a role in domestication, religion may have been more important. In Egypt, cats became sacred to the goddess Bastet, and millions were bred for sacrifice.
“The connection between domestic cats and the Egyptian goddess Bastet reaches its zenith in the 1st millennium BC,” Doherty said. “At temples dedicated to her, we find millions of mummified cats. There were so many that in the Victorian period, tonnes of them were brought back to Britain to be ground down and used for fertiliser.”
In the process of breeding millions of kitties for ritual murder, traits that made them easier to handle were gradually selected for – and voilà, the domestic cat was born. Charming.
A second genomic study, on which Doherty was a co-author, analysed 87 ancient and modern cat genomes and found no evidence that domestic cats entered Europe with Neolithic farmers. Instead, they arrived within the last 2,000 years – most likely from North Africa.
“I guess it tells us that the closeness between humans and cats is not the result of the duration of the relationship between the two, as with the dog,” Doherty said.
And given the reason for their early domestication, it’s no wonder cats still act like they’re gods.
Both studies are preprints and are still awaiting formal peer review.
Read more:
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- The (very very weird) reasons cats lick people
- How to tell if your cat is actually happy, explained by a feline body language expert
About our expert
Sean Doherty is a senior research fellow at the University of Exeter. He specialises in exploring deep-time human-animal-environment interactions through the synthesis of zooarchaeological, biomolecular (isotope analysis, proteomics and genetics), historical and anthropological research.