A cat-and-mouse game played out in a Chinese village
5,300 years ago is helping scientists understand how wild felines became the
tame pets we know today.
Cat Goddess Bastet |
Scientists believe it was the cat's appetite that
led to domestication. Grain stored by ancient farmers was a magnet for rodents,
which in turn attracted wild cats. Over time, the cats adapted to village life
and became tame around their human hosts.
This is, at least, the leading theory, derived from
archaeological evidence in the Middle East, rather than China.
But bones recently discovered in a Chinese village add weight to the idea that
felines took on pest-control duties in ancient times, says researcher Fiona
Marshall of Washington University in St. Louis.
Marshall co-authored a report
on fossil research, published online by the Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences.
The study, focused on an agricultural village in
northern China, sheds light on the poorly understood history of felines. The
earliest representations of domesticated cats originated in Egypt over 1,000
years later.
Researchers found evidence that rodents threatened
the village grain supply by burrowing into storage vessels that were designed
to keep them out.
The ancient feline bones revealed chemical
signatures indicating the animals had eaten rodents that in turn fed on millet,
a grain crop known to be harvested by the villagers.
It is possible the cats were not wild, but rather
were domesticated elsewhere and brought in for pest-control purposes, Marshall
said. Either way, the ancient bones help fill a gap in the hypothesis of feline
domestication, she said.
Greger Larson of Durham University, UK called the
new research "an important step forward" in an area that has
previously attracted less study than the domestication of dogs, pigs and sheep.
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