Cats are the whole biography

It was believed to open in full for quite some time that the Egyptians tamed cats. However, in the year in Cyprus, a burial was opened by age of years BC. A wild beast would hardly be put in the grave. It turned out that the cats lived with people long before they appeared in Egypt. The Middle East began to be considered the homeland of domestic cats and forgot about Egypt for a while.

But for a short while: in the year in the south of Egypt, a burial was opened, in which six cats were found - a male, a female and four kittens. Although this burial was younger than Cyprus for the years, it became clear that in Egypt cats were known much earlier than until recently. It is known that the ancestor of the domestic cat was the steppe cat Felis Silvestris Lybica - he still lives in the steppe, deserted and partly mountainous regions of Africa, front, Central and Central Asia, in North India, Transcaucasia and Kazakhstan.

In the year, it was possible to establish that all modern cats came from him. Over time, these or those changes accumulated in the genome in the genome, and if you can trace for the ancient remains of animals how and when such changes arose, you can definitely establish where domestic cats first appeared and how they spread through the globe. They analyzed more than two hundred DNA samples taken from the remains of cats from age to the years that were found during archaeological excavations in Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

For analysis, they did not use ordinary, nuclear, DNA, but the one contained in mitochondria. Mitochondrial DNA is transmitted only along the maternal line, since after fertilization at the bud, only those mitochondria that were in the egg are preserved. In such DNA, it is relatively easy to restore the female genealogy line, not being distracted by the father’s genes. The steppe cat has its own “mitochondrial portrait” - characteristic features in the DNA of mitochondria, which distinguish it from other related species.

And this is quite consistent with the “Middle East” hypothesis: in these places about 10 years ago, wild cats found that rodents are found near the food reserves made in abundance and that it is better to be friends with people. The mitochondrial portrait of such cats was called "Tip A". About years BC. Since the cats are characterized by territoriality and they are not inclined to long travel, animals were obviously able to quickly resettle on all continents with the help of people.

But back to Egypt. Perhaps the “Type C” cats appeared in Egypt earlier, but it was not possible to extract the amount of DNA from more ancient burials for analysis. Over time, Egyptian cats became very popular: by the fifth century of our era, they could be found throughout Europe and throughout the Mediterranean, and by the end of the first millennium in some places they completely supplant cats of the Middle East type.

The popularity of “Type C” cats can be explained by the notorious special attitude of the Egyptians to these animals: there were more and more cats in Egypt, and here among them, which is especially important, they selected not only good hunters, but also pleasant “cohabitants” who got rid of wild disobedience. Changes that were gradually taking place in Egyptian cats are also traced in Egyptian art: at first, animals were depicted for some useful occupation, like fishing, but then cats on murals are more and more “domesticated” and get closer to people-they already catch birds, they have collars, they are sitting under a chair while people are busy with people.

Lunch, as on one of the frescoes dated about a year BC. But where did the cat "type C" come from in Egypt? It can be assumed that the Egyptians have domesticated the cats regardless of other peoples, taking as a basis the local population of the steppe cats, whose mitochondrial DNA after domestication “from scratch” gave “type C” - in this case, local domestic cats arose here.

But it could have been different: at first, the Middle Eastern cats “Type A” appear in Egypt, which later, as a result of crossing with local wild cats, turn into a cat “Type C”. And subsequently, the Egyptians kept at home exactly such domestic cats with "wild" genetic additives. Be that as it may, all modern cats are a mixture of “type A” and “type C”. And even if the Egyptians themselves did not dominate anyone, it was they who made cats universal favorites, teaching them to communicate and affection.

It is curious that the genes that control the color have remained unchanged for domestic cats for a very long time, and only around the XIV century. If we take dogs or horses for comparison, then they “changed into home” quite early, but the appearance of cats, probably for a long time, was not dealt with for a long time - the main thing is to learn to behave in the house.

In the year during excavations in Central China, in the town of Zuanhutsun, where there was once a farm of prehistoric farmers, several cat bones were found by the age of years.The analysis of the remains showed that these were domestic cats: they ate some animals, which, in turn, ate cereals, that is, obviously, the cats hunted small rodents, and people clearly cared about them, part of the bones belonged to a rather old beast, which, most likely, would not have survived until such an age without human assistance.

The question arose, where did these animals come from: came with the Middle Eastern merchants or domesticated them right here? Researchers from the Sorbonne and the University of Aberdeen, together with Chinese colleagues, came to the conclusion that all prehistoric cat bones that were found in China belong to the Bengal cat - Prionailurus Bengalensis. In the article published last year in the PLOS One scientific journal, the authors give several arguments in favor of the fact that these were not just wild animals that roamed a person near the settlement, namely, cats at an early stage of tagging.

We list these arguments: some remains belonged to cats, which were slightly less wild individuals, that is, the domestication process had already occurred, and one of the cats was buried entirely, which indicates a special relationship between the animal and man. However, the “experiment” of taming the Bengal cat ended in nothing: over time, in China, long -shorted descendants of the steppe cat appeared in China, who were more obedient, more useful in the household and who knew better what people wanted from them, and people themselves understood what their cat meow was remembering about.

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