Earliest evidence for commensal cat processes at Quanhucun, China

At the 5,300-year-old farming village of Quanhucun in central China, Hu and colleagues combined zooarchaeology with stable isotope analysis of cat, rodent, human and dog bones to reconstruct an early commensal food web. Isotopes showed the cats ate animals that fed on millet, indicating they hunted grain-raiding rodents around human stores, exactly the ecological scenario proposed for domestication. One cat had eaten more grain-based food than expected, hinting it may have been fed or scavenged human refuse, and another was aged, suggesting it lived long in the village. Later genetic work indicated these were leopard cats rather than Felis lybica, implying an independent, ultimately unsuccessful commensal experiment in East Asia parallel to the Near Eastern lineage that became today's house cat.