According to this study, cats domesticated themselves, i.e., they have been living as partners of human from the very beginning, hence their independent spirits.
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Study Traces Cat’s Ancestry to Middle East (NYT)
By NICHOLAS WADE
Published: June 29, 2007
Some 10,000 years ago, somewhere in the Near East, an audacious wildcat crept into one of the crude villages of early human settlers, the first to domesticate wheat and barley. There she felt safe from her many predators in the region, such as hyenas and larger cats.
The rodents that infested the settlers’ homes and granaries were sufficient prey. Seeing that she was earning her keep, the settlers tolerated her, and their children greeted her kittens with delight.
At least five females of the wildcat subspecies known as Felis silvestris lybica accomplished this delicate transition from forest to village. And from these five matriarchs all the world’s 600 million house cats are descended.
A scientific basis for this scenario has been established by Carlos A. Driscoll of the National Cancer Institute and his colleagues. He spent more than six years collecting species of wildcat in places as far apart as Scotland, Israel, Namibia and Mongolia. He then analyzed the DNA of the wildcats and of many house cats and fancy cats.
Five subspecies of wildcat are distributed across the Old World. They are known as the European wildcat, the Near Eastern wildcat, the Southern African wildcat, the Central Asian wildcat and the Chinese desert cat. Their patterns of DNA fall into five clusters. The DNA of all house cats and fancy cats falls within the Near Eastern wildcat cluster, making clear that this subspecies is their ancestor, Dr. Driscoll and his colleagues said in a report published Thursday on the Web site of the journal Science.
The wildcat DNA closest to that of house cats came from 15 individuals collected in the deserts of Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, the researchers say. The house cats in the study fell into five lineages, based on analysis of their mitochondrial DNA, a type that is passed down through the female line. Since the oldest archaeological site with a cat burial is about 9,500 years old, the geneticists suggest that the founders of the five lineages lived around this time and were the first cats to be domesticated.
Wheat, rye and barley had been domesticated in the Near East by 10,000 years ago, so it seems likely that the granaries of early Neolithic villages harbored mice and rats, and that the settlers welcomed the cats’ help in controlling them.
Unlike other domestic animals, which were tamed by people, cats probably domesticated themselves, which could account for the haughty independence of their descendants. “The cats were adapting themselves to a new environment, so the push for domestication came from the cat side, not the human side,” Dr. Driscoll said.
Cats are “indicators of human cultural adolescence,” he remarked, since they entered human experience as people were making the difficult transition from hunting and gathering, their way of life for millions of years, to settled communities.
Until recently the cat was commonly believed to have been domesticated in ancient Egypt, where it was a cult animal. But three years ago a group of French archaeologists led by Jean-Denis Vigne discovered the remains of an 8-month-old cat buried with its human owner at a Neolithic site in Cyprus. The Mediterranean island was settled by farmers from Turkey who brought their domesticated animals with them, presumably including cats, because there is no evidence of native wildcats in Cyprus.
The date of the burial far precedes Egyptian civilization. Together with the new genetic evidence, it places the domestication of the cat in a different context, the beginnings of agriculture in the Near East, and probably in the villages of the Fertile Crescent, the belt of land that stretches up through the countries of the eastern Mediterranean and down through what is now Iraq.
Dr. Stephen O’Brien, an expert on the genetics of the cat family and a co-author of the Science report, described the domestication of the cat as “the beginning of one of the major experiments in biological history” because the number of house cats in the world now exceeds half a billion while most of the 36 other species of cat, and many wildcats, are now threatened with extinction.
So a valuable outcome of the new study is the discovery of genetic markers in the DNA that distinguish native wildcats from the house cats and feral domestic cats with which they often interbreed. In Britain and other countries, true wildcats may be highly protected by law.
David Macdonald of Oxford University, a co-author of the report, has spent 10 years trying to preserve the Scottish wildcat, of which only 400 or so remain. “We can use some of the genetic markers to talk to conservation agencies like the Scottish Natural Heritage,” he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/29/science/29cat.html?ei=5090&en=493ed12dd6e5c8c2&ex=1340769600&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
- posted on 07/05/2007
I am not sure the authors presented convincing evidence to support the claim that "cats domesticated themselves". The paper basically shows that the time of the domestication of cats is much earlier than believed previously, now coinciding with the dawn of agriculture.
It sounds a little bit far fetched to say that the house cats domesticated themselves just because they and humans went through a difficult period of time together.
The house cats do display a manner consistent with their being the master of the house, however. :-)
So the Chinese say "it takes nine life cycles for a person of fine ethical conduct to become a cat." 人要修行九世才能变做一只猫。 - Re: Cat lovers 请进: Study Traces Cat’s Ancestry to Middle East (ZT)posted on 07/06/2007
amzing creature
- posted on 07/06/2007
多谢八十一子更正。那第一句话是我说的,不算报纸的错。我看不到原文,不知为什么,Science一般我是看得到的呀。
这看到一段写cats在古埃及的,地位比我想的还高。俺们着了火是领导先行,人古埃及是猫先行——
Laws were created at that time to protect cats, since they were held in such high regard. Due to the cat's exalted status, a religious order of cat worship developed that lasted for more than 2,000 years. The cat goddess Bastet became one of the most revered figures of worship. Bastet had the body of a woman and the head of a cat. Associated with fertility, motherhood, grace, and beauty, Bastet's largest temple was in the city of Bubastis. The word for cat in ancient Egypt was "mau," similar to our "meow," a universal cat word.
Inscription on the royal tombs in Thebes read:
"Thou art the Great Cat, the avenger of the gods, and the judge of words, and the president of the sovereign chiefs and the governor of the holy Circle; thou art indeed…the Great Cat
During the reign of the Pharaohs, it was considered a capital crime to kill or injure a cat, even if the cat died through an unfortunate accident. If a house caught fire, the rule went like this—cats first, humans second. If a cat should die of natural causes the entire household went into elaborate mourning with chanting and pounding of chests as an outward sign of grief. The body of the cat had to be wrapped in linen and delivered to the priest who inspected the cat's body to be certain the cat had died a natural death.
After death the cat's body was embalmed, wrapped again in linen, decorated and either buried in special cemeteries or entombed in temples. Thousands of cat mummies were preserved in a huge temple at Bubastis. Mouse mummies were also found in the tombs, to assure that the cat had food for the journey into the afterlife. In fact, the Egyptians so loved their cats that cats mummies far and away out numbered human mummies found in Egypt. Over 300,000 cat mummies were found in one excavation alone at Beni-Hassan in the 1800s.
http://www.judithstock.com/Speaking_of_Animals/History_of_Cats/history_of_cats.html
再从wiki搬来这个表:动物最初被domesticated的时间地点。显然猫这一条要改。另外Cow在 Sub-sahara也有的么,怎么记得Diamond说非洲的domesticated animals都是进口的呢?以前看书说安地斯山一道特色菜是Guinea pig,心想去的话可千万不要撞上,看来还由来已久。
Species Date Location
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Dog 15000 BCE Multiple locations
Goat 10000 BCE Iran
Sheep 8000 BCE Middle East
Pig 8000 BCE China and Near East
Cow 8000 BCE India, Middle East, and Sub-sahara
Cat 7000 BCE Mediterranean Basin
Chicken 6000 BCE India and Southeast Asia
Guinea pig 5000 BCE Peru
Donkey 5000 BCE Egypt
Water buffalo 4000 BCE China
Horse 4000 BCE Ukraine and Russia
Llama 3500 BCE Peru
Silkworm 3000 BCE China
Rock Pigeon 3000 BCE Egypt, Mediterranean Basin
Bactrian camel 2500 BCE Central Asia
Dromedary (Arabian camel) 2500 BCE Arabia
Banteng Unknown Southeast Asia, Java Island
Gayal Unknown Southeast Asia
Yak 2500 BCE Tibet
Goose 1500 BCE Europe
Chinese Goose 1500 BCE East Asia
Alpaca 1500 BCE Peru
Domesticated duck 1000 BCE China
Muscovy Duck Unknown South America
Reindeer 1000 BCE Siberia
Guineafowl Unknown Africa
Common carp Unknown East Asia
Ferret 1500 BCE-500 BCE Europe
Domesticated turkey 500 BCE Mexico
Goldfish Unknown China
European Rabbit 1600 Europe - Re: Cat lovers 请进: Study Traces Cat’s Ancestry to Middle East (ZT)posted on 07/06/2007
要是说家鼠 domesticated themselves, 倒是满合适。 :-)
虽然我们不有意饲养家鼠,但它们选择了跟我们住在一起。
多谢八十一子更正。那第一句话是我说的,不算报纸的错。
“更正“不敢当。事实上,是文章作者之一对纽约时报说了那句话。 - Re: Cat lovers 请进: Study Traces Cat’s Ancestry to Middle East (ZT)posted on 07/07/2007
浮生知音如晤:一看这英文,恨不得找根绳子往脖子上勒。所以没法给你回帖。 - Re: Cat lovers 请进: Study Traces Cat’s Ancestry to Middle East (ZT)posted on 07/07/2007
- Re: Cat lovers 请进: Study Traces Cat’s Ancestry to Middle East (ZT)posted on 07/07/2007
这里也有爱猫的人,送一张我收藏的猫照片。
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