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The study included two species of small cats, domesticated cats and leopard cats. Rijksmuseum, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
The modern world’s pet cats are products of a long process of domestication and trade. It began some 10,000 years ago in modern-day Turkey, when Anatolians tamed and befriended Near Eastern wildcats. About 7,000 years later, these companion cats spread to Europe through trade. But scientists have long wondered when and how feline friends arrived in China—where they’re currently the most popular urban pet.
Now, using genetic testing, researchers have discovered that pet cats likely arrived in China around 600 C.E.—over 1,500 years after their introduction to Europe. According to a study recently published on the preprint server bioRxiv, cats were one of the many assets that traveled east on the famous Silk Road, the lengthy trading network that connected Asia with Europe between the second century B.C.E. and the 15th century C.E.
Per the study, China’s oldest known domestic cat lived in the central province of Shaanxi between 706 and 883, during the Tang dynasty. It likely sported a short, all-white or partly-white coat—like most Chinese house cats today—and a long tail, and its ancestors probably came from Kazakhstan.
wildcat
Today's domestic cats are descended from the African, or Near Eastern, wildcat. Rute Martins of Leoa's Photography (www.leoa.co.za), CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Upon domestic cats’ arrival in China—as gifts given to Chinese elites by western merchants—they became so popular that they were written into Chinese folk religion, “regarded as prized, exotic pets,” as study co-author Shu-Jin Luo, a principal investigator at the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity and Evolution at Peking University in China, tells Live Science’s Sascha Pare.
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Most domestic cats in China are white or partially white. Cheng Zhang, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
“Ancient Chinese people even performed specific religious rituals when bringing a cat into their homes, viewing them not as mere possessions but as honored guests,” Luo says. “Cats’ mysterious behaviors—alternating between distant and affectionate—added an air of mystique.”
For the study, the researchers analyzed the remains of 22 cats unearthed at 14 Chinese archaeological sites spanning about 5,000 years. They radiocarbon-dated some of the remains, then sorted them by species: Felis catus, the modern domestic cat that descended from wildcats, or Prionailurus bengalensis, a small leopard cat native to China that wasn’t domesticated but lived among humans. Fourteen of the studied skeletons belonged to house cats. Finally, the researchers compared the samples’ DNA with worldwide genetic cat data.
“This is by far the largest and most comprehensive study on small felids living closely with humans in China,” Luo tells Live Science. “Assembling the archaeological samples of cat remains from China across this time period [was] a highly challenging task.”
Scientists had previously speculated that leopard cats were actually independently domesticated in China: In the over-5,000-year-old village of Quanhucun, researchers once found remains of small felines that apparently lived close to humans. According to the 2013 study, one of these cats died at an old age, with dull teeth, apparently eating a diet of grain, which suggests that someone might have been caring for it.
Woman
Domestic cats began spreading to China from the Middle East about 1,400 years ago. anonymous, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Chinese farmers might have recognized that the leopard cats were good rat-killers and began feeding them. These cats likely weren’t domesticated, but they might have been on the “doorstep to domestication,” as Melinda Zeder, an archaeozoologist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, tells Science’s David Grimm.
As for China’s domesticated cats, all of the new study’s house cats share a genetic signature called clade IV-B, reports Science. While it’s rarely been found in the Middle East, clade IV-B was previously identified in the remains of one cat who lived in medieval Kazakhstan, between 775 and 940 C.E. That cat is the oldest house cat ever found on the Silk Road. This led the researchers to believe that their Chinese samples have roots in the Middle East and arrived in China via the ancient trading route.
“Before now, there was just speculation,” Luo tells Science. “This is the first scientific evidence.”
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