A study has revealed new information about the ancient migration and domestication of cats in Europe following the arrival of their wild ancestors in Europe from the Near East (the modern Middle East and Western Asia) many millennia ago.
Reporting on their findings in the journal Antiquity, the researchers say they’ve uncovered evidence to suggest that Near Eastern wildcats may have arrived in Central Europe a few thousand years earlier than previously suspected. These animals were the forerunners of the modern domestic cat , and it was their movements westward and northward into European countries that ultimately led to their domestication.
Ancient cat skull from Grudziadz, Poland. (MT Crajcarz / Antiquity Publications Ltd )
Cats Have Been in Central Europe for a Long, Long time
The study was carried out by a team of archaeologists and genetic experts from Poland and several other Central European countries. It looked at the results of genetic studies and radiocarbon dating tests of the remains of both wild and domestic cats, covering an era ranging back approximately 10,000 years, to the Late Pleistocene period, and moving forward to the Late Middle Ages. Their initial studies focused on mitochondrial DNA, which is the genetic material passed on from mother to children in all animal species (this type of DNA is easier to recover than nuclear DNA). They were able to obtain results from more than 200 ancient cat skeletons collected from the Near East and European regions, which were found at…
