HOW CATS CHARMED STONE AGE HUMANS.

Long before they conquered ancient Egypt, cats seduced Stone Age farmers who launched the worldwide feline takeover of human homes and hearts, a DNA study showed on 19th June, 2017 (Monday). The first wildcat to travel abroad, and the forefather of domestic cats today, was Felis Silvestris Libica - a small, striped Middle-Eastern sub-species that went on to colonialise the entire world, the research revealed. It likely travelled to Europe by ship from the region of Anatolia around modern-day Turkey, some 6,000 years ago.
"The cat's worldwide conquest began during the Neolithic period", the study wrote. The Neolithic was the closing chapter of the Stone Age - a time when pre-historic humans first tried their hand at cultivating crops. With farming came harvest-munching rats, which in turn attracted cats.
The team analysed the DNA of 230 buried and mummified ancient cats in a bid to settle the debate over who was responsible for turning the wild feline into the cuddly couch-slouchers we know today.
Wild cats are solitary, territorial hunters with no hierarchical social structure - seemingly poor candidates for domestification. Yet today, there are an estimated 500 million domestic cats in the world - one for every dozen or so people.
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