Paleogenetics uncovers the cat’s fast conquest of the world and long voyage to domestication

Eva-Maria Geigl∗1

11Institut Jacques Monod, Epigenome and Paleogenome group, 15, rue H´el`eneBrion, 75205 Paris cedex 13, France. – Institut Jacques Monod – France

R´esum´e

Where does the domestic cat come from? Archeological finds hinted to southwest Asia and Egypt, but could not settle the question. Genetics of modern cats established that all domestic cats are descendants of the north African/southwest Asian wildcat Felis silvestris lybica, but the complete lack of a population structure hampered the characterization of the domestication process. We analyzed the DNA preserved in a large amount of cat remains covering roughly the last 9,000 years. Cats in pre-Neolithic Europe all belonged to the European subspecies Felis silvestris silvestris while the cats in Anatolia at the beginning of the Neolithic belonged to the F.s.lybica subspecies. These latter ones showed up in early Neolithic sites in southeast Europe suggesting that they had been translocated by migrating early farmers. We identified another lineage in cat remains from Ptolemaic Egypt and found them in large numbers in Roman sites in the eastern Mediterranean area, and then in Viking sites at the Baltic Sea. The distribution pattern retraces human migrations as well as trading and raiding routes confirming historical sources indicating that cats were travelling with humans, mainly on ships.

Genomic data from modern cats showed that domestic cats and wildcats are not very dif- ferent, and that the genomic differences mainly concern the behavior. Through the analysis of a gene that is responsible for the coat pattern of cats, we showed that the blotched tabby marking, typical of present-day domestic cats, was a late phenotypic change, while wildcats and all human-associated cats up to the 14th century were carriers of the genetic variant coding for the mackerel tabby marking and thus had a striped coat.

We conclude that the domestication process of cats was commensal, long and light and allowed the cat to stay wild for a long time.

Mots-Cl´es: ancient DNA, paleogenetics, animal domestication, commensalism, Felis silvestris lybica

∗Intervenant

sciencesconf.org:uispp2018:180087