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Edited by Dolores R. Piperno, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Washington, DC, and approved November 13, 2013 (received for review June 24, 2013)
Significance
Domestic cats are one of the most popular pets worldwide, but little is known about their domestication. This study of cats living 5,300 y ago at the agricultural village of Quanhucun, China provides the earliest known evidence for mutualistic relationships between people and cats. Isotopic data demonstrate that humans, rodents, and the cats ate substantial amounts of millet-based foods, with cats preying on grain-eating animals. One cat was old and one ate less meat and more millet than others, suggesting it scavenged leftovers or was fed. Diverse data demonstrate rodent threats to stored grain, indicating cats were advantageous to farmers, whereas food in villages was attractive to cats. These findings provide evidence for commensal processes of cat domestication.
Abstract
Domestic cats are one of the most popular pets globally, but the process of their domestication is not well understood. Near Eastern wildcats are thought to have been attracted to food sources in early agricultural settlements, following a commensal pathway to domestication. Early evidence for close human–cat relationships comes from a wildcat interred near a human on Cyprus ca. 9,500 y ago, but the earliest domestic cats are known only from Egyptian art dating to 4,000 y ago. Evidence is lacking from the key period of cat domestication 9,500–4,000 y ago. We report on the presence of cats directly dated between 5560–5280 cal B.P. in the early agricultural village of Quanhucun in Shaanxi, China. These cats were outside the wild range of Near Eastern wildcats and biometrically smaller, but within the size-range of domestic cats. The δ13C and δ15N values of human and animal bone collagen revealed substantial consumption of millet-based foods by humans, rodents, and cats. Ceramic storage containers designed to exclude rodents indicated a threat to stored grain in Yangshao villages. Taken together, isotopic and archaeological data demonstrate that cats were advantageous for ancient farmers. Isotopic data also show that one cat ate less meat and consumed more millet-based foods than expected, indicating that it scavenged among or was fed by people. This study offers fresh perspectives on cat domestication, providing the earliest known evidence for commensal relationships between people and cats.
Footnotes
- ↵1To whom correspondence may be addressed. E-mail: ywhu{at}ucas.ac.cn or fmarshal{at}wustl.edu.
↵2Present address: School of History and Culture, Shanxi University, Taiyuan 030006, China.
Author contributions: Y.H., S.H., W.W., F.B.M., and C.W. designed research; Y.H., S.H., W.W., X.W., X.C., and L.H. performed research; Y.H., S.H., W.W., X.W., and F.B.M. analyzed data; and Y.H. and F.B.M. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1311439110/-/DCSupplemental.
Earliest evidence of commensal cats
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