Cats of Middle Eastern descent - AFP
Researchers in France have solved an ancient mystery of why cats are the most popular domestic animals in the world, with 500 million of them.
The first conclusion that researchers have found is that our favorite domestic companion is not from European wild cats but from the Middle East.
'All domestic cats come from a wild species from the Middle East called the Phyllis Sylvesteris Lipica,' said Eva Maria Giegel, a researcher at the Jacques Mono Institute in Paris.
To find this common ancestor for all domestic cats, an international scientific team conducted a large-scale genetic study involving more than 230 older species, including cats from different regions who lived from 10,000 years ago to the first half of the 20th century.
The researchers concluded that the rapprochement between wild cat and man occurred with the emergence of agriculture 10 thousand years ago when humans began to breed hunters and fruit-eaters to live in permanent housing.
Cats from emerging villages approached catapults on rodents, which in turn attracted human cereal stocks. Humans were impressed with the idea of getting rid of these nuisance animals that were killing crops and causing disease, and this relationship was born between humans and cats. The cats later invaded the world during two separate waves, the researchers said.
'At first, we noticed that the cat from the Middle East began to spread when the first farmers migrated to Europe' around 4400 BC.
Later, in the fifth century BC, Egyptians began to care for the cats they carved through statues and drawings and even mummified them. This passion gradually moved to the Roman and Greek empires, creating a new migration wave.
'We know, for example, that Romanian warships were carrying rodents that were destroying their stocks and equipment,' the researchers said in an article published by the French National Center for Scientific Research.
But it is still difficult to determine when the cat moved from a 'granular' animal to a domestic animal.