Ancient Humans and their Cats

While I was pondering upon the topic of my next article, I thought of writing about the evidence of dogs and their role in the lives of ancient humans. While recalling zooarchaeology classes from my masters days, it occurred to me that we were never taught about cat domestication. So I started exploring how and when did cats get introduced into the domestic households and consequently decided to write about it. Dogs have been domesticated as pets in every sense, however, cats are really only tamed. Dog remains have been reported in plenty from the archaeological record in contrast to the limited cat remains. Dogs had a purpose for being domesticated i.e. providing security in return for consistent food supply and shelter but I wonder what such purpose did cats serve when they first began living amidst human settlements?

The relationship between cats and humans is believed to have started through commensalism. The term commensal simply means ‘eating at the same table’ or in this particular context, ‘hanging around humans’. It does not necessarily mean that commensal relationships are friendly or are purposely invented, for example, rats also occupy human settlements but they destroy food stock and spread diseases. With the advent of agriculture and a sedentary way of life, rats became a part of the human settlements. The presence of rats must have been an important factor that attracted cats to the human colonies for easy meals. If you’ve watched Tom and Jerry as a kid, you probably noticed how Tom is always chasing after Jerry while he steals food. So now that we know cats act as pest controllers against vermins and rodents, let’s find out when and where were they first encountered along with humans.

Traditionally, it has been believed that Egyptians were perhaps the first people to domesticate wildcats around 3600 BC. Remains of a cat recovered from a predynastic tomb in Hierakonpolis provide evidence of broken bones that had healed during the lifetime of the cat. Although it was a skeleton of a jungle cat, it provides the evidence for commensalism. Continued work at Hierakonpolis has further revealed a burial of six cats - an adult female, an adult male and four kittens belonging to two different litters. Skeletal analysis of the remains have shown that morphologically, the cats are smaller in size from the jungle cat and closer to Felis Silvestris. The burial is dated to the Naqada IC-IIB period i.e. 3800 BC. Later periods have yielded abundant evidence of significance of cats in Egypt in the form of cat mummies, illustrations in paintings, and as feline Goddesses Bastet, Mehit and Mafdat during the Early Dynastic rule. Due to prolonged famines in Egypt, grains had to be stored in underground silos. The long periods of crop storage attracted rodents which in turn attracted cats. Ultimately cats emerged as saviours from crop destruction due to rodents and thus gradually became an important part of ancient Egyptian culture. 

Other archaeological and genetic data have revealed much older origins of the domestic cat. In the year 2004, archaeological excavations on the island of Cyprus in the Mediterranean yielded evidence of a wildcat identified as belonging to the species F. silvestris lybica, buried alongside a human from a Neolithic site. The human skeleton, whose gender remains unknown, was buried with grave goods such as seashells, stone tools, a lump of iron oxide and remains of an eight-months old cat in a tiny grave oriented in the similar westward position as the human. The burial dates to c. 9500 years Before Present (BP). Evidence suggests that wildcats are not native to the Mediterranean except for Sicily, indicating that they had been brought there, probably via sea route from the Levant region which lies adjacent to Cyprus. This  geographical origin data corroborates well with the evidence from DNA analyses carried out in 2000 and 2007. A study of DNA samples from 979 wild and domestic cats from the Middle East, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Japan, US, UK and South Africa revealed that all the domestic cats have descended from F. silvestris lybica, the Middle Eastern wildcat. So even though the evidence from Cyprus is of a wildcat, it is generally accepted as the earliest commensal example of cat-human interaction.

The definite evidence of cats morphologically smaller than the wildcats comes from the site of Tell Sheikh Hassan al Rai in Lebanon. It is a Mesopotamian site belonging to the Uruk period i.e. 5500 years BP. Cat skeletons have also been reported from the Neolithic period sites in China dating between 7000 to 5000 years BP, although the cat species is different from the one found elsewhere. This has led scholars to think that there might have been an isolated domestication event in that region. More recently, a study published in the beginning of 2020 has reported remains of the domestic cat from a Medieval city Dzhankent, in Kazakhstan. It is the earliest evidence of a fully domesticated cat from the archaeologically famous Silk Road. It is now widely accepted that all domestic cats i.e. Felis silvestris catus have descended from one wild ancestor i.e Felis silvestris lybica. More research is needed before anything can be said about their dispersal routes. I guess cats choose to remain as elusive from the archaeological record as they are in the wild.

I’d like to conclude with an interesting story I read that says that during the Middle Ages in Europe, cats were affiliated with witches and demons and were hunted in large numbers. This resulted in a rapid decline of cat population and inversely an increase in the black rat population. The implications of this were so massive that it caused the Bubonic plague or the more famous Black Death. I have indeed read that bubonic plague is caused by fleas that live on the black rats but it is known to have spread through the sea routes and the accompanying trading ships. However, I found the idea that it happened due to a reduction in cat population interesting. I hope someday someone studies the role of cats during the Bubonic plague in Europe, it would be an intriguing topic for a thesis! 

Bhakti G

Note: None of the information I have provided belongs to me, respective sources have been listed in the references, cheers!

References:

Haruda, A. F., Miller, A. V., Paijmans, J. L. A., Barlow, A., Tazhekeyev, A., Bilalov, S., ... & Härke, H. (2020). The earliest domestic cat on the Silk Road. Scientific reports, 10(1), 1-12.

Vigne, J. D., Evin, A., Cucchi, T., Dai, L., Yu, C., Hu, S., ... & Dobney, K. (2016). Earliest “Domestic” cats in China identified as leopard cat (Prionailurus bengalensis). PloS one, 11(1), e0147295.

Vigne, J. D., Guilaine, J., Debue, K., Haye, L., & Gérard, P. (2004). Early taming of the cat in Cyprus. Science, 304(5668), 259-259.

Driscoll, C. A., Clutton-Brock, J., Kitchener, A. C., & O’Brien, S. J. (2009). The taming of the cat. Scientific American, 300(6), 68.

Linseele, V., Van Neer, W., & Hendrickx, S. (2007). Evidence for early cat taming in Egypt. Journal of Archaeological Science, 34(12), 2081-2090.

Van Neer, W., Linseele, V., Friedman, R., & De Cupere, B. (2014). More evidence for cat taming at the Predynastic elite cemetery of Hierakonpolis (Upper Egypt). Journal of Archaeological Science, 45, 103-111.