Re: The cat domestication happened more than 100,000 years ago

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Daniel J. Milton" <dmilt1896@...>
wrote:

>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "alexandru_mg3" <alexandru_mg3@>
> copied a BBC story, saying:
> "However, the new results show the house cat lineage is far

older.

> Ancestors of domestic cats are now thought to have broken away

from

> their wild relatives and started living with humans as early as
> 130,000 years ago."
> But (as apparently happens much too frequently with science
> stories) BBC got it wrong. I'm a subscriber to Science and was able
> to read the real article online. One of the forks on the cladogram

of

> Felis sylvestris is labeled 131,000 yrs., but this way precedes the
> domestic cat. The authors find that wild cats fall into five groups
> native to Africa, Asia, and Europe, and that all domestic cats fit
> into the group that inhabits the Middle East. They suggest that
> domestication occurred when cats found a great supply of rodents in
> granaries, soon after the invention of agriculture. There has been

a

> lot of interbreeding of wild and domestic cats wherever they

coexist,

> but the authors find no evidence for a second domestication (unlike
> horses for example, where when the idea of taming spread, people
> rounded up their own wild races).
> It is an interesting question why cats weren't common enough in
> the ancient Indo-European world to have a general I.E. name.
> Dan
>

Could you post the Science article please...It's a shame to quote
from a quote...but I don't have access to the original Article

Thanks,
Marius