Cat domestication
Domesticación del gato
- Date
- c. 7500 BCE · confidence high
- Place
- Shillourokambos, Limassol, Cyprus
- Credited to
- PPNB settlers of Cyprus; African wildcat from the Levant
- Field
- Life & health
What it is
A joint burial of a human and a wildcat deliberately taken to Cyprus, evidence of a commensal relationship begun by granaries and their mice. It is the only domesticated carnivore that came to the settlement of its own accord.
Full domestication, with morphological change, is consolidated in Egypt in the 3rd–2nd millennium.
What it led to
- Control of rodents in silos and houses, reducing grain losses
- A companion animal and later an object of worship (Egypt)
- Worldwide spread of the cat aboard grain ships
Built on
- Granary / grain siloc. 9300 BCE
- Grain silo
- Sedentism
Made possible
- Granary protection
- Egyptian feline cult