Abstract
The ancestor of all modern domestic cats is the wildcat, Felis silvestris lybica, with archaeological evidence indicating it was domesticated as early as 10,000 years ago in South-West Asia. A recent study, however, claims that cat domestication also occurred in China some 5,000 years ago and involved the same wildcat ancestor (F. silvestris). The application of geometric morphometric analyses to ancient small felid bones from China dating between 5,500 to 4,900 BP, instead reveal these and other remains to be that of the leopard cat (Prionailurus bengalensis). These data clearly indicate that the origins of a human-cat ‘domestic’ relationship in Neolithic China began independently from South-West Asia and involved a different wild felid species altogether. The leopard cat’s ‘domestic’ status, however, appears to have been short-lived—its apparent subsequent replacement shown by the fact that today all domestic cats in China are genetically related to F. silvestris.
Highlights
With global numbers of more than 500 million individuals, the domestic cat (Felis catus) is amongst the most common pet in the world today
Based on the 11 landmarks recorded on the mandibles, we established that the leopard cat and the European and the SW Asian wildcats clearly differ in shape (F(42, 264) = 3.46, p = 4.8e-10), but not in size (Chi2 = 6.36, df = 3, p = 0.09)—the vertical ramus appears to be more developed in the dorsal and posterior direction in leopard cats than in wildcats (S3 Fig)
Analyses show that all Chinese archaeological felid specimens were unambiguously identified as leopard cat (P. bengalensis)
Summary
With global numbers of more than 500 million individuals, the domestic cat (Felis catus) is amongst the most common pet in the world today. The presence of cat remains at much earlier archaeological sites from Cyprus (dating from 10,800 to 8,000 cal BP, i.e. Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic A, [PPNA] to Khirokitia phase) [5,6,7,8] and another complete cat skeleton tightly associated with a human PPNB burial dating to 9500–9000 cal BP at Shillourokambos [6], provide intriguing evidence for their human introduction to the island and suggest that at least some cats of apparently unchanged wild morphology were commensal, but already on their way to being domesticated in SW Asia during the early Holocene This early introduction of cats to Cyprus from somewhere in continental SW Anatolia or the Levant may have been a deliberate act on the part of the PPN settlers to deal with a new problem—commensal mice (Mus cypriacus/domesticus).
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