Habiba Hamisi, 28th November 2025

All domestic cats (Felis catus) trace their ancestry back to the African wildcat.

And, true to feline nature, they were in no hurry to form a close partnership with humans.

New scientific findings suggest that cats made the transition from solitary hunters to human-friendly companions far later than once believed—and in a different region of the world.

Analysis of ancient cat bones from archaeological digs indicates that this shift happened only a few thousand years ago, and most likely in northern Africa rather than the Levant.

Prof. Greger Larson of the University of Oxford explained that despite cats being everywhere today from viral videos to TV shows their bond with humans is surprisingly recent.

According to him, what we would recognize as the modern huma cat relationship began about 3,500 to 4,000 years ago, not 10,000.

Tracing Cat Domestication

Although all modern cats descend from the African wildcat, the timeline and location of their domestication have long been debated.

To better understand this, researchers examined DNA from cat remains found across Europe, North Africa, and Anatolia. After dating the bones and comparing their genetic signatures with those of living cats, the team concluded that domestication did not coincide with the rise of early farming communities in the Levant.

Instead, the process began several millennia later, likely in ancient Egypt.

This conclusion aligns well with what is known about Egyptian culture, which famously celebrated and protected cats, depicting them in art and preserving them as mummies.

Cats Spread Across the World

Once cats began living alongside people, they quickly became valued for their hunting skills, especially on ships and in settlements where pest control was vital.

They did not reach Europe until roughly 2,000 years ago—much later than earlier theories proposed travelling with the Romans before eventually spreading along the Silk Road into China.

Today, cats live on every continent except Antarctica.

China’s Early “Cat Companions”

In an unexpected twist, scientists also discovered that a different wild cat species interacted with humans in China long before true domestic cats appeared there.

These were leopard cats small spotted wild cats common throughout Asia. Archaeological evidence shows that they lived in close proximity to human communities in China for about 3,500 years.

Prof. Shu-Jin Luo of Peking University notes that this was a commensal relationship: the leopard cats benefited from access to rodents around human settlements, while people tolerated or even appreciated their presence.

However, leopard cats were never domesticated and remain wild throughout Asia today.

Interestingly, modern Bengal cats are the result of crossbreeding between leopard cats and domestic cats a hybrid that gained recognition as a formal breed in the 1980s.