New study published in Science! After years of hard work in the lab and in front of our laptops to analyse the data we can now tell more about the origins of domestic cats!
The domestic cat (Felis catus), which descends from the African wildcat Felis lybica lybica, is one of the world’s most popular human household companions. Yet, the timing and circumstances of cat domestication and dispersal remain uncertain. Our new study builds on the analysis of 70 ancient genomes from Europe and Anatolia spanning 11,000 years, from the 9th millennium BCE all the way to the 19th century CE. We also generated 17 low- to mid-coverage genomes from modern and museum specimens of wildcats across Italy (including Sardinia), Bulgaria, and North Africa (Morocco and Tunisia). Our results reveal that all Neolithic and Chalcolithic cats from Anatolia and southeast Europe belong to the European wildcat species (Felis silvestris) rather than to early domestic cats originating in the Near East, as previously proposed. The earliest domestic cats appeared in Europe only about 2,000 years ago. They most likely originated from North Africa, although from a currently undetermined source population. Our results indicate that the Romans, during the imperial period, played a pivotal role in the dispersal of domestic cats throughout their empire’s territory. We also show that present-day Sardinian wildcats are not feral descendants of domestic cats. Instead, they represent a distinct lineage introduced to the island before the arrival of domestic cats, most likely from northwest Africa during the 1st millennium BCE.
Yet this is only one side of the story (the European one). So much to uncover yet!
