How did humans tame cats?

The pieces of history have more or less revealed the first evidence of how humans tame cats into useful pets.

For a long time, archaeologists have sought the first evidence of the relationship between humans and cats.

They found a wild cat buried near a person on the island of Cyprus some 9,500 years ago, a proof of closeness in the relationship between cats and humans.

And since ancient Egypt, there are paintings - about 4,000 years old - depicting cats, often sitting next to a woman's chair.

Recently, new archaeological evidence about the relationship between people and cats has been found in China.

These evidence was published Monday in the Proceedings of the Academy of Sciences in the form of documents, including a series of hypotheses about the relationship between humans and cats.

The story begins with agriculture. About 5,560 - 5,280 years ago in Shaanxi, central China, people experienced an agricultural revolution.

"This explosion is early, but it is not the earliest in China," Fiona B.Marshall of the University of Washington told The Atlantic. "That's thanks to the real success of the livestock industry."

Here, they live in small villages, with clusters of houses, cemeteries and public areas. They raise pigs, dogs and plant trees, mainly with a few pieces of rice that are stored in ceramic pots.

Cats are close pets that have been domesticated thousands of years ago.(Photo Matt Cardy / Getty Images).

At that time, the farmers had a bit of a problem: Rodents. Archaeologists in Quanhucun village found an ancient rodent cave leading to an ancient grain storage pit.

Storage vessels found in village corners are characterized by smooth surfaces, which seem to be designed to protect the attack of z okors (mole-like rodents).

Many evidence of rodent bone has been found to show that they consume quite a lot of millet."Obviously, rodents have eaten peas from farmers , " Marshall said.

In the end, the farmers also found help in their war against rodents: It was a cat.

Archaeologists have found eight cat bones in pits. When they look at the isotopes in their bones, they can detect traces of food that cats have eaten, and you may not know that cats have eaten the animals that have eaten no less of their grain. human.

Marshall explained: "Plants have different ways of photosynthesis in different places. If it is hotter or closer to the tropics, they will synthesize many C4 sugars , meanwhile. If in a cooler place, they are more likely to synthesize C3 sugar, Quanhucun is a cool area, so the vegetation will synthesize many C3 sugar, the deer are obviously eating plants that contain C3. and dogs that ate all of the C4 and C4 plants that are often found in millet, which are grown and brought into that area.

Rodents and cats all have signs of C4. This shows a chain of links from human farming, to rodents and cats.

It doesn't take long for farmers to realize the benefits of raising cats and breeding them, "By not killing them, even helping them in different ways - providing warm accommodation and food. "Marshall said.

Although there is not much evidence to suggest this process, there is a clue about one of the bones of teeth that seems to be from an old cat, suggesting "at least it lived very well in that environment." .

Marshall says this evidence is "concussion detection" because scientists have never seen any old documents that show how wild cats become pets.

"It's hard to find the exact archaeological evidence proving this domestication process," she said.

"Normally we can find time or place. It can be speculated that the behavior of modern cats soon attracted farmers, but it is really uncertain. However, this gives them We see, there used to be cat food in the ancient farming village , and they helped farmers, by eating rodents, thereby forming a mutual relationship. "

A sick kitten is cherished by a volunteer.(Photo Matt Cardy / Getty Images).

Marshall explained, it is difficult to find archaeological evidence, in part because humans do not tend to eat cat meat.

"Most of what we excavated from ancient houses and villages doesn't have many signs of cats," she said.

Moreover, it was a surprise from cat bones in China, compared to most of the available evidence of cats found in Egypt and around the eastern Mediterranean.

Moreover, modern genetics has shown that domestic cats today have more in common with Middle Eastern wildcats than anywhere else.

Research is still being done on the Shaanxi cat's DNA to determine if there is any relationship.

Such as through a cross-Asian trade route, between the ancient cats and popular pets today.

Whether they are relevant or not, Marshall agrees that the whole series of events, from farming to rodents to cats, can be spontaneous, since it starts happening in many places, many Point in the same time, anywhere there is both agriculture and wildcat."It can happen this way, everywhere , " she said.

Pure cats are a catalyst for agricultural development , domestic cats have become more recent pets than domesticated dogs, which have been around since hunting and gathering, long before agriculture was discovered. .

Wild wolves have been attracted by the animal meat that humans hunt, and then, "humans find them useful for alerting or for help in hunting." This may have happened about 10,000, even 20,000 years ago, Marshall said.

The kitten was given a bottle by a volunteer.(Photo Matt Cardy / Getty Images).

But, like cats, this process is called "commensal" by the scientists. Unlike cows or sheep, humans are domesticated from wild animals that humans hunt; Dogs and cats come into a mutually beneficial relationship with humans through food.

This process is not purely intentional, people do not set a goal of trying to tame a cat or a dog and make it a pet, but as a chain reaction through many stages. and as a result they become our pets today.

Marshall says that according to the modern conception, domestication is a complex and difficult process to clearly distinguish between pure and wild."The idea of ​​pure was hardly accepted in the 19th century , " she said.

"At that time, Darwin was thinking a lot about the livestock industry: You have a male, you have a child, you are intensive farming, and you change the animals deliberately."

But that's not what happened to cats and dogs. There are animal reactions to humans, and human reactions to animals. There is a relationship, focused on food, in which both species - humans and cats - react and adapt over time.

An inevitable result is "people are changing things," Marshall said, "but some of them are deliberate and others are not."