Pet cats arrived in China via the Silk Road 1,400 years ago, ancient DNA study finds
China's first pet cats arrived in the country around 1,400 years ago — likely via the famous Silk Road trading route, ancient feline DNA reveals.
This new research — hailed as a "knockout study" — places the arrival of domestic cats in East Asia several hundred years later than previous studies. And it appears that the kitties were an instant hit with the local elite.
"Cats were initially regarded as prized, exotic pets," study co-author Shu-Jin Luo, a principal investigator at the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity and Evolution at Peking University in China, told Live Science in an email. "Cats' mysterious behaviors — alternating between distant and affectionate — added an air of mystique."
Modern domestic cats (Felis catus) descend from African wildcats (Felis silvestris lybica). Previous research suggests these felines began living alongside humans in the Middle East roughly 10,000 years ago, before evolving and then spreading to Europe about 3,000 years ago, according to the new study.
Around A.D. 600, merchants and diplomats first transported domestic cats in small crates and cages from the eastern Mediterranean through Central Asia, Luo said. These traders and officials brought just a handful of the pets to China, offering them as tribute to members of the elite, she said.
Related: Lasers reveal secrets of lost Silk Road cities in the mountains of Uzbekistan
Archaeological evidence shows that long before the arrival of domestic cats in China, people in rural Chinese communities lived alongside native leopard cats (Prionailurus bengalensis). Researchers have previously found leopard cat bones dating to 5,400 years ago in an ancient farming village in the northwestern Shaanxi province, indicating that humans and cats co-existed in settlements together.
But this relationship was not equivalent to cat domestication, the authors of the new study argued. Moreover, the common assumption that cat domestication took place in China during the Han Dynasty between 206 B.C. and A.D. 220 also lacks support, as there are no archaeological remains of pet cats from that period. Therefore, a complete re-evaluation of when and how domestic cats came to China is required, the researchers said in the study.
To address these questions, Luo and her colleagues analyzed 22 feline remains from 14 archaeological sites in China spanning a period of about 5,000 years. The researchers first sequenced nuclear and mitochondrial DNA in the bones to determine each species. Then, the researchers compared these results with previously published data from 63 nuclear and 108 mitochondrial genomes that summarize the evolution of cat genetics worldwide.
"This is by far the largest and most comprehensive study on small felids living closely with humans in China," Luo said. "Assembling the archaeological samples of cat remains from China across this time period [was] a highly challenging task."
Fourteen of the 22 feline bones from China belonged to domestic cats, according to the study, which was uploaded Feb. 5 to the preprint database BioRxiv and has not yet been peer reviewed. The oldest of these pet cat remains originated from Tongwan City in Shaanxi and was radiocarbon dated to A.D. 730, suggesting that domestic cats arrived in China long after the Han Dynasty had ended.
The 14 domestic cats in the sample all shared a genetic signature in their mitochondrial DNA known as clade IV-B. This signature is rare among domestic cats from Europe and Western Asia, but the researchers found a close match in the previously published data about a cat that lived sometime between A.D. 775 and 940 in the city of Dhzankent, Kazakhstan.
The Dhzankent cat is the oldest-known domestic cat along the Silk Road, offering tantalizing clues about the origins of domestic cats in China. The Silk Road's heyday lasted between A.D. 500 and 800, hinting that merchants likely transported the kitties to East Asia along this route.
The cats that merchants and diplomats initially gifted to the Chinese elite were likely all-white cats or mackerel-tabby cats with white patches, the researchers noted in the study. DNA from the Tongwan City cat suggested it was a healthy male with a long tail and short, either all-white or partially white fur, they said. Even today, the proportion of white cats is higher in East Asia than elsewhere in the world, the researchers added.
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Domestic cats became so popular following their introduction to China that people incorporated them into Chinese folk religion, Luo said. "Ancient Chinese people even performed specific religious rituals when bringing a cat into their homes, viewing them not as mere possessions but as honored guests," she said.
Melinda Zeder, an archaeozoologist at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History who was not involved in the new research, told Science magazine that the work offers valuable insights into how domestic cats made it to China. "Tying them to the Silk Road is really boffo," Zeder said. "It's a knockout study."
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00:00 We know the innovation cycle in Chinese A.I. has been very fast. Yeah. Yeah, but what happens if that slows down? I mean, sometimes people are hearing concerns. For instance, Deep Sea hasn't released a second reasoning model. Is that something that you need to be worried about? Uh, let's see. I would say as just a single organization or a single person, you really cannot go there fast for one time. Okay? You know, you're you're kind of like, you know, I can work in, like, for three days and without any sleep, but. But not anymore. Okay, Not anymore. And you have to. You can not, like, work 30 days and to have any sleep, okay? There's no way you could do that Work ethic in China. Yeah. Yeah. But I would say collectively, we can have an A very fast data ratio. Okay. Like. So that's why I really like a start. Would start with a mindset. So basically, you know, like deep sea could do something very fast. Okay. And, and then, like, we also have. Okay. Mm hmm. And then, like me. Okay. 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Because the computing is so fundamental. So when we use analogy about, you know, between the electricity and a computing is me a lot of things, okay, so electricity is elastic business. It would be for another 100 years. Okay. So that's the hard part for for, for the people to really understand. So at the very beginning it is hard. Yeah. I think something that we see right now is, is certainly money that's being directed at strong talent. Yeah. And and there's stories, of course, in Silicon Valley, we see people that are getting hundreds of millions of dollars. And yeah. What do you think about that? I think it's a I don't think it's that it's the let's see. It's a typical way of doing thing. They'll get out of that. The reason very simple. You know, example, when I when I study that, that they're able to cut out, you know, the first thing I did that was in Tucson eight the first I did it to get to Silicon Valley and to try to get tenant healthcare. And and and after talking to a lot of people and realize actually we don't have much a tenant there because new. Okay yeah so and also with some of the tenants it just too expensive and too expensive basically means okay you don't know whether the cannabis is there when is high when you hired these people. So it's really about innovation. So when you're in the early stage of innovation, I don't think a tenant is a problem because you know, they have the only thing you need to do is to get the right person. Not really is expensive person because if the new business, if this is true innovation, that it basically means the tenant and nobody cares about them. Okay. And I was working working on that. So for the today, what happened for the lack of matter is because they are very much a focus on the existing success of the business and existing. It's average all the technology that's the that that's that's, that's my view. Okay. So I think we have a tremendous opportunity to look at technology nobody knows to there and these talent these are current but but these are I can't say it's cheap but but it's it's available for you. Okay. So that's really about a vision, you know, where you want to where you want to go. And there's a lot of similar scenes, you know, happened during the last 20 years. Also, whenever everybody knows that these are talent and it's better for you not to Getty. And that isn't that that's not new that's that's my that's my so like personally that I hide that's okay you now he's had it he's a leader for the king you probably met him you know when you're in Hanzo you know I presently interview him, you know, 15 years ago. Hey, we got tenant. Now he's reading the key. Yeah, but so that's, so that's, that's why there's not really any justification. Then it sounds like you think so. Yeah. 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