PARIS, FRANCE—A study of cat remains dating to the fourth millennium B.C. suggests that the animals were domesticated in China, in addition to the Near East and Egypt. According to a press release, a team of scientists from France’s National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS), the French Natural History Museum (MNHN), the University of Aberdeen, the Chinese Academy of Social Science, and the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology analyzed the mandibles of five cats unearthed at archaeological sites in Shaanxi and Henan provinces. The bones, which all dated to between 3500 and 2900 B.C., belonged to the leopard cat, Prionailurus bengalensis—a wild cat that still lives in Eastern Asia at the edge of human settlements. Prionailurus bengalensis was a distant relative of Felis silvestris lybica, the ancestor of all of today’s domestic cats. Felis silvestris lybica is thought to have replaced the domesticated descendants of the leopard cat in China at the end of the Neolithic period with the opening of the Silk Road and trade with the West. To read about Egyptian animal mummies, go to "Messengers to the Gods."
