Eating and Not Being Eaten

Animal	Years Before Present	Location
Dog	15k	Asia/Elsewhere
Sheep	10k	Middle East
Cat	9k	Eastern Mediterranean
Pig	8k	Middle East/China?
Cattle	8k	Middle East
Zebu Cattle	6k	Pakistan
Horse	6k	Central Asia/Elsewhere?
Llama	4.5k	Peru

Table of Domesticated Plants
Plant	Location	Date
Emmer wheat	Near East	9000 BCE
Fig trees	Near East	9000 BCE
Foxtail Millet	East Asia	9000 BCE
Flax	Near East	9000 BCE
Peas	Near East	9000 BCE
Einkorn wheat	Near East	8500 BCE
Barley	Near East	8500 BCE
Chickpea	Anatolia	8500 BCE
Bottle gourd	Asia	8000 BCE
Bottle gourd	Central America	8000 BCE
Rice	Asia	8000 BCE
Potatoes	Andes Mountains	8000 BCE
Beans	South America	8000 BCE
Squash	Central America	8000 BCE
Maize	Central America	7000 BCE
Water Chestnut	Asia	7000 BCE
Perilla	Asia	7000 BCE
Burdock	Asia	7000 BCE
Rye	Southwest Asia	6600 BCE
Broomcorn millet	East Asia	6000 BCE
Bread wheat	Near East	6000 BCE
Manioc/Cassava	South America	6000 BCE
Chenopodium	South America	5500 BCE
Date Palm	Southwest Asia	5000 BCE
Avocado	Central America	5000 BCE
Grapevine	Southwest Asia	5000 BCE
Cotton	Southwest Asia	5000 BCE
Bananas	Island Southeast Asia	5000 BCE
Beans	Central America	5000 BCE
Opium Poppy	Europe	5000 BCE
Chili peppers	South America	4000 BCE
Amaranth	Central America	4000 BCE
Watermelon	Near East	4000 BCE
Olives	Near East	4000 BCE
Cotton	Peru	4000 BCE
Apples	Central Asia	3500 BCE
Pomegranate	Iran	3500 BCE
Garlic	Central Asia	3500 BCE
Hemp	East Asia	3500 BCE
Cotton	Mesoamerica	3000 BCE
Soybean	East Asia	3000 BCE
Azuki Bean	East Asia	3000 BCE
Coca	South America	3000 BCE
Sago Palm	Southeast Asia	3000 BCE
Squash	North America	3000 BCE
Sunflower	Central America	2600 BCE
Rice	India	2500 BCE
Sweet Potato	Peru	2500 BCE
Pearl millet	Africa	2500 BCE
Sesame	Indian subcontinent	2500 BCE
Marsh elder (Iva annua)	North America	2400 BCE
Sorghum	Africa	2000 BCE
Sunflower	North America	2000 BCE
Bottle gourd	Africa	2000 BCE
Saffron	Mediterranean	1900 BCE
Chenopodium	China	1900 BCE
Chenopodium	North America	1800 BCE
Chocolate	Mesoamerica	1600 BCE
Coconut	Southeast Asia	1500 BCE
Rice	Africa	1500 BCE
Tobacco	South America	1000 BCE
Eggplant	Asia	1st century BCE
Maguey	Mesoamerica	600 CE
Edamame	China	13th century CE
Vanilla	Central America	14th century CE

Cats slowly domesticated themselves starting about 10,000 years ago. Unlike other domesticated animals who mostly live in herds and eat plants, cats are solitary and eat meat (Driscoll, Clutton-Brock, Kichener, & O’Brien, 2009). They found that “domestic cats arose in a single locale, the Middle East” (p. 71). On Cyprus, an island in the eastern Mediterranean, archeologists discovered the body of an eight-month-old cat intentionally buried near a person. The two burials were dated as being9,500 years old (Vigne, Guilaine, Debue, & Gerard, 2004). Unlike dogs, cats more closely resemble their wild ancestors, can survive without human help, and resist human efforts to limit their breeding opportunities. Left alone, cats tend not to wander far from where they were born. Cats, Lloyd (1986) suggests, migrate slowly “less than one mile per generation” (p. 51). Despite their tendency to not move much on their own, cats are found everywhere around the world either because their owners took them with them as they moved from place toplace or because the cats stowed away on ships. Thus, the study of cat genetics, interesting for its own sake, also reveals much about the migration of humans over the last 10,000 years from the earliest civilizations in western Asia (see chapter 2) to the rest of Europe and East Asia, and eventually, to the entire world.

The genetic key opening the rest of this story began when Searle (1947) first observed and calculated gene frequencies for wild type and mutant cat coat colors and patterns (e.g., wild or tabby, nonagouti or black, blotched tabby, sex linked orange, and others) in London. Since then hundreds of similar surveys have been conducted around the world and have been used to infer the historical patterns of human migration. In Europe, the pattern of nonagoutimutation, as measured by gene frequency analysis, may point to early human dispersals from Phoenicia and Greece to North Africa (Todd, 1997). Later migrations can also be interpreted through cat genetics. New York’s cats, even now, are more genetically similar to the cats of Amsterdam than to the cats of Boston, reflecting the movement of people and their cats from Holland to North America starting in 1626 (Lloyd, 1986).

Driscoll, C. A., Clutton-Brock, J., Kichener, A. C., & O’Brien, S. J. (2009). The taming of the cat, Scientific American, 300(6), 68-75.

Lloyd, A. T. (1986). Pussy cat, pussy cat, where have you been?, Natural History, 95(7), 46-52.

Searle, A. G. (1947). Gene frequencies in London’s cats, Journal of Genetics, 49, 214-220.

Todd, N. B. (1977). Cats and commerce, Scientific American, 237(5), 100-107.

Vigne, J. D., Guilaine, J., Debue, K., & Gérard, P. (2004). Early taming of the cat in Cyprus, Science, 304, 259.

Eating and Not Being Eaten & Domestication

Domestication:
A few species of animals and plants have been transformed by human activity into domesticated species, organisms dependent on human intervention and care. Domestication transformed human existence and made possible the world humans live in today.

Feeding in group-living herbivores

Recognizing Food

Hunting Food

Domestication

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Cats and Human Migration