History Of The Cats: From The Beginning

Although it is widely accepted that cats were first domesticated in Egypt 4,000 years ago, their existence among humans in history goes back much further. Wild cats are known to have lived among humans in Mesopotamia more than 100,000 years ago, and were domesticated around 12,000 BC, around the same time as dogs, sheep and goats. Archaeological excavations over the past 10 years have revealed evidence that the Near Eastern Wild Cathew is the closest relative of domestic cats in the modern world and was domesticated by Mesopotamian farmers to maintain control of pests that flood grain stocks, such as mice.

Author David Derbyshire quotes from a 2007 CE research project: “The research used DNA samples collected from 979 wild and domestic cats to piece together pieces from the feline family tree. They looked for mitochondrial DNA markers – a kind of genetic material that could indicate when the kinship relationships between the descendants of wild and domestic cats that were passed from mother cats to their offspring were closest.” Dr Andrew Kitchener, a zoologist at the National Museums of Scotland and head of the research team, said: “This suggests that the origin of domestic cats – not to Ancient Egypt, as is the prevailing view, It dates back to earlier times than previously thought, Mesopotamia. The last common ancestor of wild and domestic cats lived more than 100,000 years ago. (Derbyshire)

Dr. Kitchener’s findings are based on a cat skeleton discovered in Cyprus in 1983 and found in a tomb dating back to 9,500 BC. This discovery, made by the archaeologist Alain le Brun, was important because there were no local cat species living in Cyprus, and it was unlikely that the inhabitants of the river had brought a wild cat to the island via a ship.

Sources:

https://www.worldhistory.org/trans/tr/2-466/kedilerin-tarihi—gecmisten-gunumuze-kediler/