A Brief History of House Cats

It may be that "nobody owns a cat," but scientists now say the popular pet has lived with people for 12,000 years

  • By David Zax
  • Smithsonian.com, July 01, 2007, Subscribe
 
house cats In the United States, cats are the most popular house pet, with about 90 million domesticated cats slinking around 34 percent of U.S. homes.

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    On any of the surprising number of Web sites dedicated entirely to wisdom about cats, one will find quotations like these: "As every cat owner knows, nobody owns a cat" (attributed to Ellen Perry Berkeley); "The phrase 'domestic cat' is an oxymoron" (attributed to George F. Will); and "A dog is a man's best friend. A cat is a cat's best friend" (attributed to Robet J. Vogel). Of course, there is such a thing as the domestic cat, and cats and humans have enjoyed a mostly symbiotic relationship for thousands of years. But the quips do illuminate a very real ambivalence in the long relationship between cats and humans, as this history of the house cat shows.

    The Mystery of the Ancient House Cat

    It has taken a while for scientists to piece together the riddle of just when and where cats first became domesticated. One would think that the archaeological record might answer the question easily, but wild cats and domesticated cats have remarkably similar skeletons, complicating the matter. Some clues first came from the island of Cyprus in 1983, when archaeologists found a cat's jawbone dating back 8,000 years. Since it seemed highly unlikely that humans would have brought wild cats over to the island (a "spitting, scratching, panic-stricken wild feline would have been the last kind of boat companion they would have wanted," writes Desmond Morris in Catworld: A Feline Encyclopedia), the finding suggested that domestication occurred before 8,000 years ago.

    In 2004, the unearthing of an even older site at Cyprus, in which a cat had been deliberately buried with a human, made it even more certain that the island's ancient cats were domesticated, and pushed the domestication date back at least another 1,500 years.

    Just last month, a study published in the research journal Science secured more pieces in the cat-domestication puzzle based on genetic analyses. All domestic cats, the authors declared, descended from a Middle Eastern wildcat, Felis sylvestris, which literally means "cat of the woods." Cats were first domesticated in the Near East, and some of the study authors speculate that the process began up to 12,000 years ago.

    Civilization's Pet

    While 12,000 years ago might seem a bold estimate—nearly 3,000 before the date of the Cyprus tomb's cat—it actually is a perfectly logical one, since that is precisely when the first agricultural societies began to flourish in the Middle East's Fertile Crescent.

    When humans were predominantly hunters, dogs were of great use, and thus were domesticated long before cats. Cats, on the other hand, only became useful to people when we began to settle down, till the earth and—crucially—store surplus crops. With grain stores came mice, and when the first wild cats wandered into town, the stage was set for what the Science study authors call "one of the more successful 'biological experiments' ever undertaken." The cats were delighted by the abundance of prey in the storehouses; people were delighted by the pest control.


    On any of the surprising number of Web sites dedicated entirely to wisdom about cats, one will find quotations like these: "As every cat owner knows, nobody owns a cat" (attributed to Ellen Perry Berkeley); "The phrase 'domestic cat' is an oxymoron" (attributed to George F. Will); and "A dog is a man's best friend. A cat is a cat's best friend" (attributed to Robet J. Vogel). Of course, there is such a thing as the domestic cat, and cats and humans have enjoyed a mostly symbiotic relationship for thousands of years. But the quips do illuminate a very real ambivalence in the long relationship between cats and humans, as this history of the house cat shows.

    The Mystery of the Ancient House Cat

    It has taken a while for scientists to piece together the riddle of just when and where cats first became domesticated. One would think that the archaeological record might answer the question easily, but wild cats and domesticated cats have remarkably similar skeletons, complicating the matter. Some clues first came from the island of Cyprus in 1983, when archaeologists found a cat's jawbone dating back 8,000 years. Since it seemed highly unlikely that humans would have brought wild cats over to the island (a "spitting, scratching, panic-stricken wild feline would have been the last kind of boat companion they would have wanted," writes Desmond Morris in Catworld: A Feline Encyclopedia), the finding suggested that domestication occurred before 8,000 years ago.

    In 2004, the unearthing of an even older site at Cyprus, in which a cat had been deliberately buried with a human, made it even more certain that the island's ancient cats were domesticated, and pushed the domestication date back at least another 1,500 years.

    Just last month, a study published in the research journal Science secured more pieces in the cat-domestication puzzle based on genetic analyses. All domestic cats, the authors declared, descended from a Middle Eastern wildcat, Felis sylvestris, which literally means "cat of the woods." Cats were first domesticated in the Near East, and some of the study authors speculate that the process began up to 12,000 years ago.

    Civilization's Pet

    While 12,000 years ago might seem a bold estimate—nearly 3,000 before the date of the Cyprus tomb's cat—it actually is a perfectly logical one, since that is precisely when the first agricultural societies began to flourish in the Middle East's Fertile Crescent.

    When humans were predominantly hunters, dogs were of great use, and thus were domesticated long before cats. Cats, on the other hand, only became useful to people when we began to settle down, till the earth and—crucially—store surplus crops. With grain stores came mice, and when the first wild cats wandered into town, the stage was set for what the Science study authors call "one of the more successful 'biological experiments' ever undertaken." The cats were delighted by the abundance of prey in the storehouses; people were delighted by the pest control.

    "We think what happened is that the cats sort of domesticated themselves," Carlos Driscoll, one of the study authors, told the Washington Post. The cats invited themselves in, and over time, as people favored cats with more docile traits, certain cats adapted to this new environment, producing the dozens of breeds of house cats known today. In the United States, cats are the most popular house pet, with 90 million domesticated cats slinking around 34 percent of U.S. homes.

    God and Devil: The Cat in History

    If cats seem ambivalent towards us, as the quotations from cat fan-sites indicate, then it may be a reflection of the wildly mixed feelings humans, too, have shown cats over the millennia.

    The ancient Egyptian reverence for cats is well-known—and well-documented in the archaeological record: scientists found a cat cemetery in Beni-Hassan brimming with 300,000 cat mummies. Bastet, an Egyptian goddess of love, had the head of a cat, and to be convicted of killing a cat in Egypt often meant a death sentence for the offender.

    Ancient Romans held a similar—albeit tempered and secularized—reverence for cats, which were seen as a symbol of liberty. In the Far East, cats were valued for the protection they offered treasured manuscripts from rodents.

    For some reason, however, cats came to be demonized in Europe during the Middle Ages. They were seen by many as being affiliated with witches and the devil, and many were killed in an effort to ward off evil (an action that scholars think ironically helped to spread the plague, which was carried by rats). Not until the 1600s did the public image of cats begin to rally in the West.

    Nowadays, of course, cats are superstars: the protagonists of comic strips and television shows. By the mid-90s, cat services and products had become a billion-dollar industry. And yet, even in our popular culture, a bit of the age-old ambivalence remains. The cat doesn't seem to be able to entirely shake its association with evil: After all, how often do you see a movie's maniacal arch-villain, as he lounges in a comfy chair and plots the world's destruction, stroke the head of a Golden Retriever?

    David Zax, a writer in Washington, D.C., recently wrote a brief history of Wimbledon.


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    Comments (20)

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    The truth is closer to Eckhart Tolle's comment that cats are the most zen-like creature. One who can observe, enjoy and learn from a cat is an enlightened person. In my town they are captured, kept in a single cage, given no litter, not fed, sprayed down with bug spray, chemical cleansers and then hauled off to be killed cruelly (all in all that pretty much sums it up; some are pulled to save but because of the maltreatment they are sick and die anyway. Those who rescue cats have found none of them were sick and dying except the ones coming from our local government shelter.) In many ways the medieval cruelty of the dark ages is alive and well today! Granted that was only a thousand to seventeen hundred years ago. By now we should all know it is not the cat who is evil, it is man. If we treated all life as equal, whether you contend that it is or not, we would certainly be a better civilization.

    Posted by Vicci Springer on February 6,2012 | 09:24 AM

    I have to say that my cat was a rescue at 8 months old. She had a bad spill within a month and hurt her hip/back. She has never jumped or whatever. It is a very tender area even now - she is 9. The vet would not x-ray. I have taken very careful care of her back and as soon as I had my back hurt she took care of me! I would have to sit/lay back on pain killers and she only came and got my attention when she went potty or needed to eat. Otherwise she let me rest and watched me to make sure I was ok. Sooo- never say cats don't take care of or care about anything other than themselves. There is at least one exception. And if you continue to look on the net you will find that they also raise other creatures too. Mine helped raise a house sparrow. Others have raised mice, birds, chickens, snakes, and even a squirrel. How about that!

    Posted by Mary on February 4,2012 | 01:18 AM

    my cats are my life.they are with me went i need some love.my mom cat has been though a hard times with me.last two yrs if not for her i would not be here today as strong as i am.she had a liter of kittens,there is one of them i had to keep so much like her,the boss i call him.so say what you want but my life is getting better,i found new love,new place.

    Posted by cindy on January 24,2012 | 03:32 PM

    I'm 66 and I talk with my cat (elizabeth) she is my third cat I was not ready before. now I love her, we exchange looks and play pick a boo , she runs after the laser, I see her features and I see a bengal tiger or a black panter I have at home a big cat but reduced. now I "must" take her to the vet, I don,t know... she is an indoor, she might never be a mother, I'm cut that wild part that I like? as I said before, we talk and ask her what should I do... elizabeth said; what?

    Posted by hector on December 19,2011 | 05:38 AM

    some dogs are good, but cats are the best, i have 2 lovely female cats and they have a telepathic relationship with me. me and my cats understand each other very well, they are so beautiful, wonderful, snuggly, and comforting.

    Posted by melynda james on October 24,2011 | 08:52 PM

    i would personally like to say that i have two dogs and one cat. neither animal is smarter or more loving both my dogs arent really my best buddies they are closer to my parents where as my cat only seems to want my attention. people say cats only love themselves but it depends on how they are raised if you give them attentuion from a young age they will love you. but you have to earn their love

    Posted by bree on October 24,2011 | 10:19 AM

    I think dogs respond better to human command than cats but I'm not sure that makes them more intelligent. I've owned both cats and dogs and in the end- cats are easier to own. Dogs can be work- with their need for attention and validation. Cats enjoy human contact- but they don't seem to need it as much. As for the loyalty issue- its my experience- that dogs are loyal to basically anyone who feeds them and pets them and cares them. This isn't true with cats for the most part. Cats tend to form one primary human bond- with their original owner- and don't lend themselves out to affection for others that readily or easily as dogs seem to do.

    Overall- I prefer cats- I appreciate their independence and their affection is earned- not given automatically to anyone with a hunk of meat in their hand.

    Posted by Captain Jenks on October 11,2011 | 05:32 PM

    i do believe that dogs are smarter than cats and dogs aren`t EVIL. but i am a dog and cat owner.this info is so great!!! but every human knows that DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN CATS!!!!!! dogs are not stupid,if you put a dog and cat in a maze, the dog would finish first cause of its super hearing and sniffing intellengence.

    Posted by tia on July 13,2011 | 05:57 PM

    I'm not going to get in to an discussion about whether dogs are cats are more intelligent. It's a mugs game because the intelligence so ovbviously present is there to serve them in very different ways.

    I have a preference for cats but I love both species. I have a pair of them for a numnber of reasons.

    Cats certainly will not hide how they feel about things or you/me for a moment. If a cat is upset it's almost impossible to miss.

    One story though about human/feline bonding. Three years ago I had open heart surgery and when they sent me home I arrived home smelling strange and acting stranger. Not only that but I'm sure I sounded very odd because I'd had a pacemaker implanted.

    Within a day it seemed a schedule was in place, they took turns going out, my big tom always went on my morning walk, the little queen got the morning nap, the tom the afternoon nap shift and one or the other got the early evening one.

    In between times I'd get the feeling I was being watched and sure eough there would be pair of yellow eyes looking at me, peering around a door or from the top of a book shelf.

    They got the attention they seemed to want but never demanded it. They were just there.

    Try to get that from a dog!

    All in all, I can't imagine a world where there are no dogs and no cats.

    Even, as far as cats are concerned it's debatable who domesticated who.

    Posted by John Wilson on March 13,2011 | 10:25 PM

    To : Judy below ...

    The history of our modern day cat (Felis silvestris catus) begins with her descent from one of five separate wild cats: the Sardinian wildcat (Felis silvestris lybica), the European wildcat (F. s. silvestris), the Central Asian wildcat (F.s. ornata), the subsaharan African wildcat (F.s. cafra and the Chinese desert cat (F.s. bieti). Each of these species is a distinctive subspecies of F. silvestris. Genetic analysis suggests that all domestic cats derive from at least five founder cats from the Fertile Crescent region, from whence they (or rather their descendants) were transported around the world.

    Source : http://archaeology.about.com/od/domestications/qt/cat.htm

    Posted by Kevin on February 13,2011 | 10:06 AM

    That cat is a very social animal. Try traing you cat. I have. Like you and I, positive reinforcement is the best method. Point traing is easy.

    Posted by lea on November 24,2010 | 11:31 PM

    I have a qestion.
    Dogs are believed to have been domesticated wolfs. Were cats also domesticted from a wild cat - or did God make our house cat as did cows horses and of course man.
    If the cat was domesticated like the wolf into a tamed animal, which cat was it?
    I woluld appreciate your thoughts.

    Posted by Judy Day on August 20,2010 | 05:28 PM

    I have both cats and dogs. I think their personalities can vary so much that we all have different experiences. I personally prefer my dog's conpany because of her willingness to make me proud. My cat is cool too, it's just different. I also really dislike the smell of cats, it is really nasty and it seems like a lot of people can't tell that their cats smell so terrible. The are good mousers though and are VERY useful for keeping the rodents down.

    Posted by brett on May 5,2010 | 10:49 PM

    Cats give me that wonderful meowy feeling all over!

    Posted by Norm on April 17,2010 | 03:51 AM

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