The complex origin story of domestic cats

Summary

by Justin Jackson , Phys.org Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Researchers looking into the origin of domestic cats have long considered that cats likely accompanied early farmers during the Neolithic, spreading through Europe alongside the adoption of agriculture. Two new large-scale investigations, one led by the University of Rome Tor Vergata in collaboration with 42 institutions and another led by the University of Exeter with contributors from 37 institutions, reveal a more complex history than previously imagined. Both point to Tunisia as the likely origin of the domestic cat. Both studies, which merge extensive genetic data with archaeological evidence, challenge the timeline of European domestic cats, and hint at cultural and religious factors that may have been pivotal in driving feline domestication and translocation. Cats have long posed a puzzle for archaeologists. Their skeletal features and commonly used mitochondrial DNA markers can overlap significantly with those of their wild counterparts. Researchers from the University of Rome Tor Vergata–led team conducted paleogenomic analyses of ancient cat specimens from 97 archaeological sites in Europe and Anatolia, as well as museum samples from Italy, Bulgaria, and North Africa. In their study, "The dispersal of domestic cats from Northern Africa and their introduction to Europe over the last two millennia," published on the bioRxiv preprint server , 70 low-coverage ancient genomes, 17 additional modern and museum genomes, and 37 radiocarbon-dated cat remains were analyzed. Results from these nuclear DNA analyses revealed that felines with domestic ancestry only appeared in Europe from around the 1st century CE onward, thousands of years later than traditional narratives suggest. The Tor Vergata team also identified two introductory waves. An earlier one brought wildcats from Northwest Africa to Sardinia by the 2nd century BCE, giving rise to the island's present-day wild population. A subsequent wave, du...