This illustration of a cat at the bottom of a bowl is one of the earliest known depictions of cats in China, dating back to 168 BC. Indications on the fur suggest that it is a leopard cat rather than a domestic cat. (Image credit: Hunan Museum Collection Database)
The first domestic cats arrived in China around 1,400 years ago, likely via the famous Silk Road, according to DNA analysis of ancient cats.
A new study called “sensational” suggests that domestic cats arrived in East Asia hundreds of years later than previously thought. Kittens seem to have quickly become popular among the local elite.
“In the beginning, cats were considered expensive and exotic pets,” study co-author Shu-Jin Luo, a lead researcher at the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity and Evolution at Peking University in China, told Live Science in an email. “The cats’ cryptic behavior — alternating between solitary and affectionate behavior — added to their mystique.”
Modern domestic cats (Felis catus) are descended from African wildcats (Felis silvestris lybica). Previous research suggests these cats began living alongside humans in the Middle East about 10,000 years ago before evolving and spreading to Europe about 3,000 years ago, according to the new study.
Around 600 A.D., traders and diplomats first began transporting domestic cats in small containers and cages from the eastern Mediterranean through Central Asia, Lo said. These traders and officials brought only a few pets back to China, offering them as gifts to members of the elite, she added.
Archaeological finds show that long before domestic cats arrived in China, villagers in China coexisted with native leopard cats (Prionailurus bengalensis). Researchers previously found leopard cat bones dating back 5,400 years in an ancient agricultural village in northwestern Shaanxi Province, indicating that humans and cats coexisted in these settlements.
However, this connection does not equate to the domestication of cats, the authors of the new study argue. Moreover, the common belief that cat domestication occurred in China during the Han Dynasty between 206 BCE and 220 CE is also unfounded, as no archaeological evidence of domestic cats from that period has been found. Therefore, a complete reassessment of when and how domestic cats arrived in China is needed, the researchers said in their study.
“It's a very difficult task.”
To answer these questions, Lo and her colleagues analyzed 22 cat remains from 14 archaeological sites in China spanning about 5,000 years. The researchers first sequenced the nuclear and mitochondrial DNA in the bones to identify each species. The results were then compared with previously published data from 63 nuclear and 108 mitochondrial genomes, which illuminate the evolution of cat genetics around the world.
“This is by far the largest and most comprehensive study of small cats that lived in close contact with humans in China,” Luo said. “Collecting archaeological samples of cat remains from China during this period [was] an extremely challenging task.”
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