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CIST Student Sandbox

IST 605: The History of House Cats

This guide provides an accessible, curated collection of resources that explore the history, domestication, cultural significance, and evolution of house cats.

Peer-Reviewed Articles 🎓

🔗Driscoll et al. (2007). The Near Eastern origin of cat domestication

  • This study uses a large genetic sample of wild and domestic cats to show that all modern house cats trace back to a single wildcat subspecies from the Near East. The findings indicate that domestication began in early agricultural communities, where repeated interactions between people and adaptable wildcats gradually formed today’s domestic lineages.

🔗Haruda et al. (2020). The earliest domestic cat on the Silk Road

  • Researchers uncovered a medieval cat skeleton in Kazakhstan that provides the earliest direct evidence of domestic cats living along the Silk Road. The discovery demonstrates that cats had spread far beyond their original domestication centers by the 8th-10th centuries, likely carried by traders and settlers.

🔗Hu et al. (2014).  Earliest evidence for commensal cat domestication

  • This article examines archaeological and isotope data from an early farming village in China, revealing that local cats lived near people and consumed food linked to human settlements. The results suggest that cats may have developed a close relationship with humans independently in East Asia through mutual benefit rather than deliberate breeding.

🔗Kurushima et al. (2013) Variation of cats under domestication: genetic assignment of domestic cats to breeds and worldwide random-bred populations

  • This study shows that even though most cat breeds are pretty new, their DNA is still different enough that scientists can usually tell which breed a cat belongs to. It also shows that randomly bred cats from different parts of the world have their own genetic patterns.

🔗Ottoni et al. (2017). The palaeogenetics of cat dispersal in the ancient world

  • Using ancient DNA from sites across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, this study maps how domestic cats spread alongside human travel and trade over thousands of years. It shows that cat domestication was a slow, layered process shaped by repeated movements of people, not a single event or location.