From today's NYT:
Some 10,000 years ago, somewhere in the Near East, an audacious wildcat crept into one of the crude villages of early human settlers, the first to domesticate wheat and barley. There she felt safe from her many predators in the region, such as hyenas and larger cats.
The rodents that infested the settlers’ homes and granaries were sufficient prey. Seeing that she was earning her keep, the settlers tolerated her, and their children greeted her kittens with delight.
At least five females of the wildcat subspecies known as Felis silvestris lybica accomplished this delicate transition from forest to village. And from these five matriarchs all the world’s 600 million house cats are descended.
. . .
Unlike other domestic animals, which were tamed by people, cats probably domesticated themselves, which could account for the haughty independence of their descendants. “The cats were adapting themselves to a new environment, so the push for domestication came from the cat side, not the human side,” Dr. Driscoll said.
Cats are “indicators of human cultural adolescence,” he remarked, since they entered human experience as people were making the difficult transition from hunting and gathering, their way of life for millions of years, to settled communities.
More amazing history from mitochondrial DNA.
I'm v. grateful to that ancient Near Eastern wildcat, the many-times-foremother of my own sweet Miss Thing.
3 comments:
me too! thanks for posting this!
--her eyes
A neighboring business, selling grass seed and fertilizer, was adopted by a ferile cat. That's pretty rare, as stray cats are very suspicious. She just walked in and took over. They've never seen a mouse there. Also "the Cat who Walked by Himself" is one of my favorite of Kipling's "Just So Stories".
I love this story, but found it fascinating that it ran on the same day as this one about the domesticated squash in the Andes from 10k years ago. I didn't know that along with the Five Original Cats there were (and indeed had long been known) five places of "invention" of agriculture.
See, I have a theory that it wasn't the gathering of seeds, or even the saving of them for intentional planting next year, that marked the 'invention' of agriculture. What did that was the invention of POTS or other containers to keep the food supply in.
If you just eat it, feh, animals can do that. Even squirrels (heh.) It becomes agriculture when you gather more than what you can eat right away and save it for times food is scarce. But how?
You leave it on the ground and it rots. You put it in, say, a dry pit lined with stones and the mice get it (thank you 5 Cats!) But if you make a pit out of hardened clay, with an opening small enough to be covered and made waterproof, then you have a new source of food year round. Then you figure out how to bring the clay above ground and make an artificial pit...voila, the pot is born.
Thus we owe all of human civilization to the search for Tupperware.
(My inability to get this thesis published in a peer-reviewed journal is clearly due to bias against women's issues, those outside the academic structure, and people who think they are comedy writers. I am contemplating legal action.)
:)
--xan
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