Today we are used to seeing them in our homes, in parks, even in the city center. But domestic cats , at least in Europe , are relatively recent tenants . In fact, their arrival dates back "only" to two thousand years ago and their site of origin was probably Tunisia. In Sardinia, however, they would have been introduced earlier, already in the second century BC, giving rise to the current wild population of the island.
Confirming this are two separate studies published on bioRxiv, a platform that collects articles not yet submitted to the peer-reviewed scientific community, led by Marco De Martino and Claudio Ottoni, of the University of Rome Tor Vergata, and Sean Doherty, of the British University of Exeter, rewriting the history of the diffusion of European domestic cats, which would be much less ancient than expected.
At first it was thought that the spread of domestic cats in Europe dated back to the Neolithic, about 10 thousand years ago. But the puzzle of scientific research, piece by piece, has given results different from the first hypotheses. From a series of new and more sophisticated genetic analyses and radiocarbon dating of almost 100 sites between Europe and North Africa, researchers have now discovered that domestic cats appeared in Europe in two waves: the first in the 1st century AD, during the first Roman imperial period, and the second a few centuries later. The specimens probably originated from the region of present-day Tunisia and would have been imported by trade in the Roman era.
Scientific evidence leads to rewriting what has been believed so far about the spread of domestic cats in Europe, a story that is also supported by the work of British researchers, carried out by analyzing ancient bones from 206 sites. This study also indicates Tunisia as the place of origin and suggests the presence of a greater number of migratory waves of cats. The British research shows that the first waves would have occurred as early as the first millennium BC: much later than previously thought.
(Unioneonline/vf)
