Earliest "Domestic" Cats in China Identified as Leopard Cat (Prionailurus bengalensis)

Jean-Denis Vigne; Allowen Evin; Thomas Cucchi; Lingling Dai; Chong Yu; Songmei Hu; Nicolas Soulages; Weilin Wang; Zhouyong Sun; Jiangtao Gao; Keith Dobney; Jing Yuan

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0147295

Earliest "Domestic" Cats in China Identified as Leopard Cat (Prionailurus bengalensis)

Jean-Denis Vigne, Allowen Evin, Thomas Cucchi, Lingling Dai, Chong Yu, Songmei Hu, Nicolas Soulages, Weilin Wang, Zhouyong Sun, Jiangtao Gao, Keith Dobney, Jing Yuan

Archaeology

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Abstract

The ancestor of all modern domestic cats is the wildcat, Felis silvestris lybica, with archaeological evidence indicating it was domesticated as early as 10,000 years ago in South-West Asia. A recent study, however, claims that cat domestication also occurred in China some 5,000 years ago and involved the same wildcat ancestor (F. silvestris). The application of geometric morphometric analyses to ancient small felid bones from China dating between 5,500 to 4,900 BP, instead reveal these and other remains to be that of the leopard cat (Prionailurus bengalensis). These data clearly indicate that the origins of a human-cat 'domestic' relationship in Neolithic China began independently from South-West Asia and involved a different wild felid species altogether. The leopard cat's 'domestic' status, however, appears to have been short-lived-its apparent subsequent replacement shown by the fact that today all domestic cats in China are genetically related to F. silvestris.

Original language	English
Article number	e0147295
Pages (from-to)	1-11
Number of pages	11
Journal	PloS ONE
Volume	11
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0147295
Publication status	Published - 22 Jan 2016

Bibliographical note

Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Dr Chengming Huang, Beijing Museum of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing; Professor Hu Yaowu, Institute of vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing and Dr Josephine Lesur, Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Paris—all of whom kindly made available modern osteological collections. Isabelle Carrère, EHESS, contributed to the production of Figs 1 and 2.

Funding: The ERAnet (https://ec.europa.eu) Co-Reach project n°137 (European-Chinese Bioarchaeological Collaboration, Euch-Bioarch) led by K. Dobney, and the Chinese Academy of Social Science funded this research. This research was also granted by the Agence National pour la Recherche (ANR, http://www.agence-nationale-recherche.fr/), through the LabEx ANR-10-LABX-0003-BCDiv, in the framework of the Investissements d'avenir programme (ANR-11-IDEX-0004-02).

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10.1371/journal.pone.0147295Licence: CC BY

Earliest “Domestic” Cats in China Identified as Leopard Cat (Prionailurus bengalensis)
Copyright: © 2016 Vigne et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Final published version, 944 KBLicence: CC BY

Keith Dobney
- School of Geosciences, Archaeology - Emeritus Professor
Person: Honorary

Cite this

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abstract = "The ancestor of all modern domestic cats is the wildcat, Felis silvestris lybica, with archaeological evidence indicating it was domesticated as early as 10,000 years ago in South-West Asia. A recent study, however, claims that cat domestication also occurred in China some 5,000 years ago and involved the same wildcat ancestor (F. silvestris). The application of geometric morphometric analyses to ancient small felid bones from China dating between 5,500 to 4,900 BP, instead reveal these and other remains to be that of the leopard cat (Prionailurus bengalensis). These data clearly indicate that the origins of a human-cat 'domestic' relationship in Neolithic China began independently from South-West Asia and involved a different wild felid species altogether. The leopard cat's 'domestic' status, however, appears to have been short-lived-its apparent subsequent replacement shown by the fact that today all domestic cats in China are genetically related to F. silvestris.",

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Earliest "Domestic" Cats in China Identified as Leopard Cat (Prionailurus bengalensis)

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Bibliographical note

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