The Cat Area: The Origin

The Origin

Hello friends and colleagues! As most of the people who know me, I most confess: I love cats!
And I know a lot of people do too, cats are important for this world, because they keep plague control in a natural way, they are instinctively cleaner than most mamals, they are smart, and also because they are funny

Every friday, we will talk about cats, breeds, colour, behaviour, etc.

So why don't we jump into the origin of theese marvelous small felines.

According to the National Geographic News, scientists have identified the house/indoor cat's maternal ancestors and traced them back to the Fertile Crescent.
It is very common to hear from different sources that cats origin comes from Egypt, not precisely Egypt, but their ancestors come from the Near Eastern, in the deserts of Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other countries near by.
It is believed that between 70,000 and 100,000 years ago, the animal gave rise to the genetic lineage that eventually produced all domestic cats.

Cats as we know them, may have been domesticated by early farming communities, between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago, when humans were just about settling down.
A research team at the University of Oxford in England found five matriarchal lineages to which modern cats belong.

As many of us already know, cats aren't completely domesticated even now days, actually, they are kind of hanging out with us humans, just for the food and the petting. But that's okay, we still love them.

However, the first farmers were  the first ones to 'domesticate' wild cats, as it also occurs in present time, cats helped farmers in hunting mices, and other pests that plagued the farm fields in the early human settlements.

 The earliest archeological evidence of cat domestication dates back 9,500 years, when people thought cats had lived alongside humans, in settlement sites in Cyprus.

According to the BBC News, in several researches, some scientists have found that cats fell into distinctive genetic groups. Their results show that, apart from accidental cross-breeding, European wildcats are not part of the domestic moggy's family tree; neither are the Central Asian, Southern African wildcats or the Chinese desert cats.

But the domestic cats as we know them, formed a clade or a type with some wild cats from the Middle East, suggesting that today's cats roots from the wild felines of this region.

Some experts believe that cats originally fetch human company because of the rodents plaguing their farms (which it still happens).

Of course there are other records regarding Egyptian people worshiping cats and such. Actually, ancient Egyptians imposed the death penalty for killing cats, as you can imagine cats were also mummified before being burried.

Other ancient civilizations later began to domesticate cats and took 'tamed' felines to Italy, where they began to spread around Europe,
Together with the discovery of 'The New World' or America, the Pilgrims introduced the 'domestic' cats into America.

The short haired cats spread all over the world from Egypt, and long haired cats began to spread over later on from Turkey and Iran.

However, and even though in the Middle Age, cats were associated with witchcraft and evil, and even they were chased and burned to death, cats are one of the most proliferated species in the world with thousands of 'breeds' all over.

So what do you think about cats? which is your favorite type of cat?



MVZ Carolina Pruneda