Furry unexpected companions

Domesticated felines in ancient China

     When we think domesticated we can avoid thinking of two creatures, the domestic cat that we know so much and the cheetahs domesticated by the Egyptians for the house, cousins ​​have been part of our past as humans, but something that few have questioned is that the first domestic feline did not emerge in Africa or the Middle East, but in China, so we will also see other domesticated felines from Asia, let's delve in, without further ado, let's begin.

The leopard cat and its domestication

The leopard cat, scientific name Prionailurus bengalensis, is a small feline native to the Asian continent, living from India through Indochina to Malaysia and reaching its range to Korea and of course, China. The size of a domestic cat and spotted like a leopard, being an active hunter like most small felines feeding on birds, small rodents, eggs and different things, but there is something else in this small mammal which is very curious.

Remains of what were initially believed to be a domestic cat were discovered some time ago in agricultural settlements in Shaanxi province, so morphometric Geometric analyzes of these small felid bones were dated to the Neolithic period of China between 5,500 and 4,900 years BC, revealing that these and other remains It belonged to the leopard cat, this was announced by the French National Center for Scientific Research. 

This already presented mutations and changes typical of a domestic animal that hunted mice, being an animal that possibly followed the path of commensalistic domestication, when researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences found ancient cat bones in human settlements in Shanxi and Henan, they wondered if they were evidence of a relationship between small Chinese cats and humans in the fourth millennium BC or if they were the first domestic cats to arrive, from the Near East.

It is believed that it was gradually replaced by domestic cats, until it became extinct, it is believed that this extinction came with the opening of the Silk Road, when the Roman and Han empires began to establish tenuous links between East and West, hypothesizing that the descendants of felis silvestris easily replace the descendants of the leopard cat, but this is missing ser comprobado.

At the moment we cannot provide more information since this matter deserves to be studied in depth, but there are still other domesticated felines that generate a lot of curiosity, hopefully in future posts.

[[[Links de lectura]]]

https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-science-space/farmers-china-domesticated-asian-leopard-cats-5000-years-ago-005316

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0147295