How cats migrated to Europe?

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The five known varieties of wildcat (Near Eastern, Chinese, Central Asian, Southern African, and European) are quite identical and can interbreed. Analysts had a tough time pinpointing where in the world the domestication of cats first began. Some even think that it had taken place at multiple times and places.

Until recently, the thinking was that cats arrived in Europe only in Late Antiquity (approximately the 3rd to 7th century AD).

Nowadays, it has been determined that the Near Eastern wildcat (Felis silvestris lybica) is the common ancestor of all domesticated cats, and that they were first domesticated in the Fertile Crescent about 10 thousand years ago.

In 2016, a team of scientists found domestic cat bones around 8,000 years old and confirmed the presence of domestic cats during the Roman period in the vast area of Europe stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to that is now northern Poland.

A spike in the Late Neolithic Eastern European house mouse population exhibits some nifty overlap with these ancient cat bones’ newly attached dates, though paleogenetic Dr. Danijela Popović notes that the cats’ appearance in Europe preceded that of the first farmers. According to him, cats domesticated themselves; they were attracted to the rodents that feasted off the harvests of the first farmers. They chose us, not the other way around. Consequently, those early farmers were grateful for this helpful form of pest control. As a result, thanks to humans, cats colonized Central Europe.

The oldest archaeological evidence for cat domestication is a 9,500-year-old burial, uncovered in Cyprus in 2004, in which a Paleolithic-era human was buried with their feline pet. There is spare evidence for the spread of cats throughout Europe before the Late Middle Ages. In Europe, cat bones only became abundant in the second half of the 13th century, which implies that cats had become popular at this time.

The conventional theory is that cats started to spread throughout the Mediterranean in Antiquity, journeying with Greeks and Romans. According to the map below, they would have hopped on board Etruscan, Greek, and Phoenician vessels to get to major Mediterranean islands like Sicily by 1700 BC, landed in ancient Greece about 1400 BC, arrive in republican Rome in about 500 BC, and make it to pre-Roman Iberia by 400 BC.

After that, cats became another thing the Roman Empire exported, just like wine and soldiers. They reached Britannia in about 100 BC and Germania at about the BC/AD milestone. Cats are affirmed in Ireland only from 900 AD, and in Scotland from 500 to 800 AD. During that time, the Vikings took cats on their long voyages across Europe, helping them spread even further.

A separate domestication taken place in Egypt around 3,500 years ago. This second population of cat varieties was likely tamer and more sociable. The Egyptians clearly revered cats. For instance, Bastet, the Egyptian goddess of love, had a cat’s head. Murdering a cat in Ancient Egypt could get you executed. And the cat necropolis of Beni-Hassan encloses some 300 thousand mummies of cats.

Recent analysis of cat DNA from 200 sources, including the Fertile Crescent and Egypt, showed the two distinct populations combined, resulting in the modern day domesticated cats. The blending of both breeds joined the cats’ usefulness with their friendliness, transforming them into a treasured companion for both agriculturists and dealers, who started taking them along on their drawn out trips across terrain and ocean.

These cats look similar to the various kinds of wildcats that used to exist (and still do), except that they’re less solitary and more tolerant of humans (and other cats). It was only in the 19th century that cat lovers started breeding the fancy breeds we know today, purely out of aesthetic reasons.