Bred For Tributes

Before cats became adored companions and Internet royalty, their early relationship with humans may have had darker origins, namely, mass ritual sacrifice, according to two new studies. 

Scholars have long believed that feline domestication began with wildcats loitering around the first Neolithic farms as they hunted rodents.  

But the recent findings – still awaiting peer review – suggest that the first domestic cats (Felis catus) appeared in Egypt around 3,000 years ago and were raised in vast numbers for mass ritual sacrifice. 

In the first paper, lead author Sean Doherty and his team reassessed cat remains from archaeological sites across Europe and North Africa using radiocarbon dating, morphology, and genetic comparisons.  

They found that remains once thought to belong to early domesticated cats – such as those from a 9,500-year-old site in Cyprus – turned out to resemble wildcats or had been misdated, often due to small feline bones shifting in soil layers over time.  

Doherty told BBC Science Focus that the new findings upend the long-held theory that cats began domesticating themselves in Europe during the Neolithic period.  

“It is often said that the wild progenitor of the domestic cat – the North African wildcat – was domesticated during the Neolithic,” he explained. “We argue that domestication of the cat began in Egypt around the second to first millennium (BCE).” 

The research team suggested ancient Egyptians began domesticating cats when they became central to the cult of Bastet, an ancient Egyptian goddess associated with fertility. The animals were bred to be more docile and social for mummification, according to ScienceAlert. 

“The Egyptian goddess Bastet … first appeared in the 3rd millennium BCE depicted with a lion’s head, but during the ninth to seventh centuries BCE, she was increasingly represented with the head of an African wildcat,” Doherty and his team wrote in their paper. “This transformation was coincident with the rise of cat sacrifice, whereby millions of free-ranging and specifically-reared cats were mummified as offerings to the goddess.” 

A second study further supported the initial findings with another team – including Doherty as co-author – conducting a genetic analysis of 87 cats spanning ancient to modern times.  

Researchers found no evidence of F. catus arriving in Europe with Neolithic farmers. Instead, their data suggested that cats began spreading from North Africa into the Mediterranean only from the 1st millennium BCE onward.  

“Our results demonstrate that the dispersal of present-day domestic cats can be traced back not to the Neolithic or from the Fertile Crescent, but … most likely from North Africa,” the authors of the second study wrote, as reported by ScienceAlert. 

The second study also identifies two waves of feline migration: One that brought wild populations to the Mediterranean island of Sardinia around the first millennium BCE, and another that spread domestic cats across Europe and beyond. According to the findings, cats didn’t reach China until about the eighth century CE. 

While other early human-cat relationships likely existed, the two papers propose that these may not represent the direct ancestors of modern domestic cats. 

If confirmed, the studies suggest that cats’ road to domesticity was shaped more by cults than cuddles.  

And given their divine status in ancient temples, it’s hardly surprising that today’s cats still act like they rule the world.