Cats became our companions way later than you think
13 days ago
- #animal history
- #cat domestication
- #archaeology
- Cats began their close relationship with humans only a few thousand years ago, not 10,000 years as previously thought.
- Domestication of cats started in northern Africa, not the Levant, and was more of an Egyptian phenomenon.
- Cats reached Europe around 2,000 years ago, much later than previously believed, and spread globally with human migration.
- A wild cat species, the leopard cat, lived alongside humans in China for about 3,500 years before domestic cats arrived.
- Leopard cats were not domesticated but recently crossed with domestic cats to create the Bengal cat breed in the 1980s.