Like a toy on a string, the timing of cat domestication has been a moving target. Now researchers have pounced on a new timeline suggesting that tame descendants of African wildcats left the continent more recently than thought.
DNA from dozens of ancient cat remains in Europe and Turkey reveals that “domesticated” felines from as early as 6,000 years ago were, in fact, wild cats. Instead, the first domesticated cats left Africa no earlier than around 2,000 years ago, researchers report November 27 in Science. Yet these felines still had plenty of time to achieve world domination, with hundreds of millions now kept as pets.