“We need to rewrite the classic story,” says Bea De Cupere, archaeozoologist at the Brussels institute, in a press release. “It was not the first farmers from the Near East, but later trade networks around the Mediterranean that brought the domestic cat to Europe.”
It was generally assumed that the domestic cat came to Europe in the Neolithic period (6,000 to 7,000 years ago), possibly together with the first farmers. The cats are said to have been attracted to mice around grain stores in the first villages and thus gradually became familiar with humans.
That story is incorrect, according to new research led by paleogeneticist Claudio Ottoni of the University of Rome. Through genetic research on recent cats and archaeological cat remains from almost a hundred sites, the researchers were able to determine very precisely how cat populations are related to each other. And this shows that European domestic cats are descended from populations from North Africa that were only brought to Europe in the past 2,000 years.
The Institute of Natural Sciences was involved in the research. “Thanks to our extensive network in the archaeozoological world, we were the central collection point for the hundreds of cat samples that were examined,” says De Cupere. “All cat identifications were checked at the institute, then inventoried and measured.” Among other things, cat bones found during excavations in Brussels and Tongeren were examined.
The study has been published in the journal Science.