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Now scientists have identified the house cat's maternal ancestors and traced them back to the Fertile Crescent.

The Near Eastern wildcat still roams the deserts of Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other Middle Eastern countries. (See map.) Between 70,000 and 100,000 years ago the animal gave rise to the genetic lineage that eventually produced all domesticated cats.

"It's plausible that the ancient [domestic cat] lineages were present in the wildcat populations back as far as 70,000 or 100,000 years ago," said study co-author Stephen O'Brien of the National Cancer Institute in Frederick, Maryland.

The wildcats may have been captured around 10,000 or 12,000 years ago when humans were settling down to farming, he added.

"One of nearly 40 wild cat species existing at that time, the little wildcat that lived in the Middle East had a genetic variance that allowed it to sort of try an experiment—let's walk in and see if we can get along with those people," O'Brien said.

One Hell of an Experiment

A research team led by geneticist Carlos Driscoll of the National Cancer Institute and scientists at the University of Oxford in England found five matriarchal lineages to which modern domestic cats belong.

"This tells us that domestic cats were sort of widely recruited, probably over time and space," Driscoll said.

But people probably weren't going out and catching—or herding—cats.

"The cats just sort of domesticated themselves. People today know that you can't keep a cat inside [without barriers], and 10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent you couldn't just shut the window."

Farmers were likely the first to domesticate wildcats. The animals may have been helpful in hunting mice and other pests that plagued farm fields in the early human settlements, which had just sprang from the first agricultural development.

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From: http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/06/28/earliest.cats.ap/index.html

Here is an image of the geographic range of the 5 related species of wildcats:



Another article showing how this is really double talk:

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Genetic study has confirmed what archeologists have suspected for decades -- the "Cradle of Civilization" is also the birthplace of the house cat.

All domestic cats, from the scrawny strays prowling the markets of Asia to the purebred reclining on the bed of a doting owner, descend from a tabby-like sub-species living in North Africa, the researchers reported on Thursday.

The near Eastern wildcat, known scientifically as Felis silvestris lybica, is the likely ancestor of all the cats whose genes were sampled by the team, they report in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

"Domestic cats throughout the entire world had a common ancestor and that common ancestor lived in the Near East. There was no separate domestication in Europe or South Africa or China," said Carlos Driscoll of the National Cancer Institute and the University of Oxford in Britain.

"The domestication of wild species to complement human civilization stands as one of the more successful 'biological experiments' ever undertaken," wrote the researchers, led by Dr. Stephen O'Brien of the National Cancer Institute, in their report.

"For cats, the process began over 9,000 years ago as the earliest farmers of the Fertile Crescent domesticated grains and cereals as well as livestock animals." The Fertile Crescent stretches from modern-day Egypt to Iran.

Preserved remains show that cats were valued by Egyptians, and one skeleton unearthed in Cyprus in 2004 showed that people were keeping cats as pets more than 9,000 years ago.

Driscoll, who admits he is a cat person, adds: "You are not civilized without a cat."

MOTHER OF ALL CATS

All domestic cats and small wildcats belong to the same species -- Felis silvestris. But there are wildcat sub-species in many regions of the world.

The international team studied the genes of 979 domestic cats as well as some of the animals that may have been their ancestors -- the European wildcat or Felis silvestris silvestris, the Near Eastern wildcat or Felis silvestris lybica, the Central Asian wildcat, the sub Saharan African wildcat and the Chinese desert cat.

They found that each of the Felis silvestris subspecies, falls into a genetically distinct group, or clade. Some of the Near Eastern wildcats and all the domestic cats fell into the same clade.

And their lineage is far more ancient than anyone suspected, originating more than 100,000 years ago. Driscoll is quick to stress, however, that the first cats were not being kept as pets by the pre-humans that existed then.

"We weren't out of Africa. We hadn't even domesticated ourselves yet, much less anything else," Driscoll said.

O'Brien has been studying the genetics of cats for years, hoping to uncover links to disease.

"Cats are a model for human genetic disease," Driscoll said. "Cats are also really good models for brain development."

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From: http://sciam.com/article.cfm?alias=cradle-of-civilization-al&chanID=sa022&modsrc=reuters

Felis Silvestris Lybica is the SAME cat seen in the portraits from Egypt, which is basically the striped tabby. The difference being that it had longer thinner legs. Nevertheless, this is STILL the SAME species of cat that the Egyptians domesticated and COVERS the SAME geographic area. Likewise the fertile crescent INCLUDES EGYPT.....

Here is an example of such a cat:

From: http://www.allcreaturesnews.com/library/FeralCatNation.html


The more likely reason why they are saying it is "Near Eastern" as opposed to African (which it is) is because they found a 9,500 year old cat burial in Cyprus. However, that does not make North Africa or the North African wild cat species Near Eastern. It will be interesting to see what the journal article ACTUALLY says because it seems the news media has gotten their facts mixed up.

In all reality, wild cats like those of the felis silvestris family, domesticated themselves. This is not an issue of "specialized" human behavior, rather it is an example of "specialized" cat behavior. Cats make themselves at home with humans, by being willing to approach humans, purr, rub against them and generally being approachable. This behavior is what made cats domesticated, as opposed to what happens with things like cattle or sheep, which takes effort, in terms of herding or fencing in. Therefore, given that these types of cats have a temperament that is conducive to human contact and have a small size, it is very much likely that these cats have been interacting with humans sinee very long ago. That is all the report is saying. Since the nature of this interaction is more due to the nature of the cat itself as opposed to the behavior of humans, it is quite likely that this interaction has been taking place wherever these creatures and humans have been living and it is impossible to put a date on it. Therefore, Africa, the Levant and Arabia are all places where such "domestication" occurred. But to call this the "Near East" is just the same pseudo scientific nonsense that pretends North Africa is not in Africa. The fact is that the only way you can know when humans started treating these cats as "household" pets is through burials and artwork. Of course Egypt had abundant artwork, but that doesn't mean that domestication started there either.

It is funny, but yesterday I was out working in the yard and a nice black cat came up and started to chat. Coulda sworn it said "hey" to me. Anyway, these are the traits that are specific to this species of cats that led to domestication, meaning the specialized CAT behavior as opposed to specialized HUMAN behavior. And while on the topic of black cats, Bast was a black cat and most cats in magic and sorcery are black as well. No doubt bast is symbolic of the social nature of the cat species in its capability of endearing itself to humans.

There are a few types of cats associated with Egypt. One is from the species felis Chaus, called the Jungle Cat, which was found mummified in Egypt allegedly:

http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Felis_chaus.html

Another breed associated with Egypt, the Egyptian Mau:
http://www.cfainc.org/breeds/profiles/egyptian.html

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