Cat History & Evolution
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A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE CAT
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE CAT
Fifty-four million years ago, the miacids. appeared. It
is from Miacis,
(the weasel-like ancestor of all carnivorous animals) and Dinictis (the
first catlike animal, appearing 10 million years later) that evolved into both
the Viverridae
(civets, genets, meerkats and mongooses) and the Felidae (all modern
cats, large and small).
When Australia split from Antarctica and moved
northward, migration opportunities opened up with the extinction of dinosaurs. Mammals
then came into their own and flourished, diverged, and evolved.
The domestic cat remains much the way Mother
Nature designed her ancestors…animals that live by night, hunting and eating
other animals.
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A Brief History of the Cat
Domestication of the Cat
Vikings Helped Cats Conquer the World
Domestication of the Cat
In the early history of the cat, there
are no known attempts to select for quality, behavior or appearance. The first
true house cats probably selected themselves, when some learned
to trust humans more easily than
others and were secure enough to rear their kittens in a domicile shared with
people.
Cohabitation with cats goes back thousands
of years. However, compared to
the domestication of other animals,
that of the cat was a somewhat haphazard process. People had already
appreciated advantages of owning horses, cattle, and dogs, because they were of
practical use. By selecting the best specimens
and hand-picking these animals for breeding certain traits, they were developed
for specific purposes and became even more useful.
When the first cats sauntered in from the
wild, they gained value as vermin hunters, but they were most probably not seen
as valuable members of a community. The cats didn’t provide much meat for food,
and although it could be tamed and became used to handling, the cat couldn’t be
trained to perform tasks on demand.
In the early history of the cat, there
are no known attempts to select for quality, behavior or appearance. The first
true house cats may have selected themselves, when some learned
to trust humans more easily than
others and were secure enough to rear their kittens in a domicile shared with
people.
Until recently, the Egyptians were
credited with the early domestication of cats approximately 4,000 years ago but
archaeological evidence has disputed this theory in 2004. Archaeologists
working in Cyprus found an older Neolithic burial ground, approximately 9,500
years old, of an adult human with a feline skeleton. As the grave contained various
valuable objects such as
stone tools and other artifacts, it was
surmised that the person had been interred with some pomp and ceremony.
Researchers concluded that the cat, estimated to be about 8 months old, was likely to have been killed
on purpose and buried because it had some uncommon significance. If this is true, the evidence that people kept cats, either as status symbols or pets,
takes a major leap backward to 7500 BCE. The Cyprus cat is similar to the
domestic cat’s ancestor, the African wildcat.
Archeologists have also recently excavated
the bones of small felines at the site of a 5,000-year-old farming community in
central China. Detailed analysis of the bones suggested that the cats had
preyed on grain-eating rodents, so they clearly had some association with the
humans, although whether by chance or because they had been tamed is impossible
to establish. Fascinating though they are, these newest finds are a long way
from representing conclusive proof that the domestication of the cat is an
older story than originally believed. However, it is likely that the domestication
of the cat progressed through a number of unsuccessful starts.
Vikings Helped Cats Conquer the World
While Vikings
don’t exactly have a reputation for being cuddly, their travel
companions do. Hoping to shed some light on the early history of cats,
in 2016 researchers reported the results of a study in which they
sequenced the DNA of 209 felines, the remains of which had been found at
various archaeological sites, dating from 15,000 to 2,700 years ago.
What they discovered was that cats expanded geographically in two waves.
During the first wave, the feline critters traveled from the Middle East to the eastern Mediterranean, an area known for its fertile lands. This finding supports the long-held belief that farmers—in desperate need of rodent control—encouraged the spread of cats. The next wave—which occurred thousands of years later—started in ancient Egypt, where cats were worshipped, and moved to Africa and Eurasia via seafarers. Researchers notably found that the DNA from an Egyptian cat matched that of a feline found at a Viking site in Germany. It is believed that Vikings—along with other mariners—took cats on ships in order to control rats and mice. These findings are not surprising, given the presence of cats in Norse mythology. The goddess Freyja—who was in charge of love, fertility, battle, and death—traveled in a chariot pulled by two large cats. (Source: britannica.com)
I can say without a doubt that at least until the 1930s, cats had their place aboard ship as the "welcoming committee" for any uninvited rodent. My dad was a career seaman who began at age 15 in the mid 30s to sail around the world, on ships with flags flying under many nations (As a Swede, he was considered "neutral" so could sail for any shipping company willing to hire him). Some of these ships were kind of primitive. Times being what they were, with few regulations, he started on sailing ships rigged with fore-and-aft sails to jumbo cargo freighters that could be landed upon by jets or carry several tons of cargo in its hold or on deck. He told me it was not unheard of for cats to be recruited to sail with the crew to keep the rodent population down. Sometimes it was the captain's pet cat who filled the vacancy. One captain, my dad told me, brought along his pet monkey, which my dad, a first mate then, was obliged to give a bath to the monkey once a week. Oh, how he hated that monkey! But that's another story...
During the first wave, the feline critters traveled from the Middle East to the eastern Mediterranean, an area known for its fertile lands. This finding supports the long-held belief that farmers—in desperate need of rodent control—encouraged the spread of cats. The next wave—which occurred thousands of years later—started in ancient Egypt, where cats were worshipped, and moved to Africa and Eurasia via seafarers. Researchers notably found that the DNA from an Egyptian cat matched that of a feline found at a Viking site in Germany. It is believed that Vikings—along with other mariners—took cats on ships in order to control rats and mice. These findings are not surprising, given the presence of cats in Norse mythology. The goddess Freyja—who was in charge of love, fertility, battle, and death—traveled in a chariot pulled by two large cats. (Source: britannica.com)
I can say without a doubt that at least until the 1930s, cats had their place aboard ship as the "welcoming committee" for any uninvited rodent. My dad was a career seaman who began at age 15 in the mid 30s to sail around the world, on ships with flags flying under many nations (As a Swede, he was considered "neutral" so could sail for any shipping company willing to hire him). Some of these ships were kind of primitive. Times being what they were, with few regulations, he started on sailing ships rigged with fore-and-aft sails to jumbo cargo freighters that could be landed upon by jets or carry several tons of cargo in its hold or on deck. He told me it was not unheard of for cats to be recruited to sail with the crew to keep the rodent population down. Sometimes it was the captain's pet cat who filled the vacancy. One captain, my dad told me, brought along his pet monkey, which my dad, a first mate then, was obliged to give a bath to the monkey once a week. Oh, how he hated that monkey! But that's another story...