How Cats Leapt from the Wild to Our Sofas
Tamed cats spread across the globe beginning almost 10,000 years ago, becoming the rodent-killing helpers of early farmers, mariners and Vikings.
This video was reproduced with permission and was first published on June 19, 2017. It is a Nature Video production.
By Nature Video
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Years before they conquered the Internet, cats colonized our sofas. But they haven’t spent the last ten thousand years just snoozing. A new study reveals that tamed cats swept through Eurasia and Africa carried by early farmers, ancient mariners and even Vikings. The researchers analysed DNA from over 200 cat remains and found that farmers in the Near East were probably the first people to successfully tame wild cats 9,000 years ago, before a second wave of cat domestication a few thousand years later in ancient Egypt
Paper Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-017-0139
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