The Near Eastern origin of cat domestication

Driscoll and colleagues sampled mitochondrial DNA from nearly 1,000 wildcats and domestic cats across Europe, Asia and Africa to resolve where the house cat came from. The analysis showed all domestic cats descend from the African or Near Eastern wildcat, Felis silvestris lybica, and trace to at least five maternal founder lineages originating in the Fertile Crescent. Unlike most livestock, cats were not bred for a product; they entered a commensal relationship by exploiting rodents around early agricultural settlements roughly 10,000 years ago. The study clarified that the other wildcat subspecies, including European and Central Asian forms, contributed essentially nothing to domestic ancestry, and it established a genetic baseline still used to track feral hybridization and breed origins today.