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Human-mediated dispersal of cats in the Neolithic Central Europe
- Source :
- Heredity. 121:557-563
- Publication Year :
- 2018
- Publisher :
- Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2018.
-
Abstract
- Archeological and genetic evidence suggest that all domestic cats derived from the Near Eastern wildcat (Felis silvestris lybica) and were first domesticated in the Near East around 10,000 years ago. The spread of the domesticated form in Europe occurred much later, primarily mediated by Greek and Phoenician traders and afterward by Romans who introduced cats to Western and Central Europe around 2000 years ago. We investigated mtDNA of Holocene Felis remains and provide evidence of an unexpectedly early presence of cats bearing the Near Eastern wildcat mtDNA haplotypes in Central Europe, being ahead of Roman period by over 2000 years. The appearance of the Near Eastern wildcats in Central Europe coincides with the peak of Neolithic settlement density, moreover most of those cats belonged to the same mtDNA lineages as those domesticated in the Near East. Thus, although we cannot fully exclude that the Near Eastern wildcats appeared in Central Europe as a result of introgression with European wildcat, our findings support the hypothesis that the Near Eastern wildcats spread across Europe together with the first farmers, perhaps as commensal animals. We also found that cats dated to the Neolithic period belonged to different mtDNA lineages than those brought to Central Europe in Roman times, this supports the hypothesis that the gene pool of contemporary European domestic cats might have been established from two different source populations that contributed in different periods.
- Subjects :
- 0301 basic medicine
biology.animal_breed
Introgression
Zoology
DNA, Mitochondrial
Article
03 medical and health sciences
Genetics
Animals
Humans
Domestication
Phylogeny
Genetics (clinical)
Holocene
Middle East
biology
Felis
Gene Pool
biology.organism_classification
language.human_language
Europe
030104 developmental biology
Archaeology
Animals, Domestic
Felis silvestris lybica
Cats
language
European wildcat
Phoenician
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 13652540 and 0018067X
- Volume :
- 121
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Heredity
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....605a0d9b0630c0014c73ed7cb29ac294