For decades, scientists believed the domestic cat first wandered into European life alongside the continent’s early farmers. But two sweeping genetic studies now suggest something more complex — and more fascinating. Our adorable fluffy companions may be the result not of pragmatic pest control but of religious reverence and Mediterranean trade.
A pair of new investigations, one led by Sean Doherty and colleagues from the University of Exeter and another by Claudio Ottoni’s team at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, have redrawn the ancient map of feline history. Together, they overturn long-held assumptions about how and when cats entered Europe.
Surprisingly Recent Events
For years, the tale of how cats became our purring companions went something like this: thousands of years ago, wildcats slinked into early farming villages in the Middle East, drawn by mice feasting on stored grain. Humans, in turn, tolerated the cats’ company—and even tossed them the occasional scrap. It was a classic case of mutual convenience, the thinking went. Cats handled the vermin, humans provided shelter, and before long, the felines had earned a spot by the fire. It was a tidy, practical story.
But it’s probably wrong.
For years, archaeologists pointed to a 9,500-year-old grave in Cyprus, where a cat was buried near a human, as the beginning of a beautiful friendship. It fit neatly with the idea that cats were attracted to Neolithic settlements for their rodent-rich grain stores, gradually taming themselves in the process.
But “our results do not support a Neolithic origin for domestic cats,” Doherty’s team writes. Their work shows that the animal in Cyprus may have been a European wildcat brought over from Anatolia — not a tamed African wildcat as long assumed. “Instead, our results suggest that the closening of human-cat relationships occurred more recently, in the first-millennium BCE. This timeframe suggests that Egypt was the locus of domestication, especially in light of the cultural evidence.”
Ottoni’s group reached the same conclusion. Their genome-wide analysis of cat remains from 225 archaeological sites found no trace of true domestic cats in Neolithic Europe. Cats with the “domestic” mitochondrial signature IV-A, they report, were in fact European wildcats that had interbred with African wildcats in the distant past.
In other words, cats didn’t sneak into Europe as freeloaders in Neolithic barns. They marched in with empires — and with gods.
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Bastet’s Children
The turning point in the cat’s story appears to come in the first millennium BCE. That’s when depictions of the Egyptian goddess Bastet began to shift. Once shown with a lion’s head, Bastet evolved into a goddess with the face of an African wildcat. Around the same time, temples began mummifying millions of cats as religious offerings.
“This would have provided the context for the tighter relationship between people and cats that led to the wildcat’s domestication, motivated by their newly acquired divine status,” writes Doherty’s team.
Religion has often propelled animal dispersal. The cults of Artemis and Diana helped spread fallow deer. Chickens were tied to Roman and Persian gods. So it’s plausible that sacred cats traveled with the cult of Bastet, hitching rides with Phoenician traders, Egyptian pilgrims, and later, Roman conquerors.
Ottoni’s analysis bolsters this view. They found that the first wave of domestic cats entered Europe not with early farmers but with Roman legions and merchants. The oldest fully domestic European cat in their study dates to just before the Common Era, from Mautern, Austria — an imperial frontier town.
Once inside Europe, cats spread fast. Doherty’s data trace successive waves of feline migration — first from Egypt, later from Romanized North Africa, and finally with Viking traders from Scandinavia. Each wave carried distinct mitochondrial DNA signatures, allowing researchers to track the flow of genes and geography alike.
By the 4th century BCE, domestic cats had reached Britain. At Gussage All Saints, archaeologists uncovered five kitten skeletons buried together, likely a deliberate human act. “The genetic result appears to confirm their original identification as domestic cats,” the authors note. One even left its paw print in a clay pot — perhaps a mischievous gesture that’s become an ancient artifact.
By the Viking Age, cats with a new genetic haplogroup, IV-D, show up in York, Orkney, and even Galway, Ireland. The Norse carried cats on their ships to control rats, but they also revered them as companions of the goddess Freyja. White cat fur, a symbol of her blessing, was prized enough to encourage selective breeding.
Affecting Wildcats
The rise of the domestic cat may have come at a cost to Europe’s native wildcats.
Ottoni and Doherty both document a sharp decline in European wildcats starting in the Roman period — centuries before habitat loss or hunting peaked. Competition, disease, and hybridization with domestic cats all likely played a role.
“Archaeological evidence suggests that the decline in wildcat abundance began earlier than previously believed,” Doherty’s team writes. And that shift was likely accelerated by the domestic cat’s arrival.
Today, wildcats face extinction across much of Europe, their genetic legacy muddled by interbreeding. These studies provide a crucial baseline for conservation, showing how hybridization began thousands of years ago — and how complex the human-animal bond truly is.
They also remind us that domestication isn’t always about utility. Sometimes, animals become sacred. Sometimes, they spread not because they help us farm, but because they help us pray.
So, the next time your cat knocks a cup off the table, consider this: it’s not just a house pet. It’s the descendant of an ancient god.
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