NEW: A group of curious cats may have made migrated from the Near East to Europe nearly 10,000 years ago, reveals a major new project studying the origin and history of our feline friends. 🐈
Strap in for an #AntiquityThread on some adventurous kitties 1/13 🧵
🧬 Previous research had recovered DNA from the Near Eastern wildcat, the ancestor of modern domestic cats, from ancient sites in Central Europe dated to 3000BC. 2/13
📸: Modern Near Eastern wildcat
This was weird since it was thought Near Eastern wildcat DNA arrived in the region via domestic cats, which were only thought to be established during the Roman period. 3/13
📸: Roman mosaic of a cat; by Massimo Finizio / CC BY-SA 2.0
🗨 “This raised questions about cats' way from the Near East to Central Europe and their relationships with humans, including their domestication status,” said Dr @PopovicDani, from @UniWarszawski. 4/13
📝 So Dr Danijela and a team of researchers began a new project combining palaeogenetics, zooarchaeology, and radiocarbon dating to study what was going on with cats in Central Europe. Their initial results are published in Antiquity. 5/13
📸: Mandibles of wild & domestic cats
🔍 They found further evidence of Near Eastern wildcat genes in European specimens from not only before housecats but before the Neolithic - when the first farmers began migrating into Europe. 6/13
📸: The team's reconstruction of cat movement into Europe
🗨 “This means that their dispersal through Europe preceded the first farmers' arrival, so these cats probably were still wild animals that naturally colonized Central Europe,” said Dr Popović. 7/13
Cats setting off on their own raises more questions:
🤝 Did the farmers form a relationship with the cats?
🌍 How far into Europe did the cats reach?
😻 Is evidence of them mating with the European wildcat?
The team hopes their project will answer some of these questions. 8/13
🐱 The researchers also want to learn more about how domestic cats appeared in Central Europe - as well as the role humans had in this.
Were the Romans herding cats? 9/13
🗨 This could also reveal how much it impacted the European wildcat's natural population: “We believe that our results will be significant for the conservation management of European wildcats,” said Dr Popović. 10/13
📏 The team also found our cats shrunk over time. Their analysis of physical changes revealed that Roman housecats were, on average, larger than modern kitties but became smaller than modern cats by the Middle Ages. 11/13
📸: Cat size over time
🗨 The team hopes this is just the start: “We believe that current research will allow us to understand the complexity of cat-human and cat-wildlife coexistence in Central Europe from the earliest moments until recent times,” said Dr Popović. 12/13
Find out more in the research paper, which is FREE to read:
The history of the domestic cat in Central Europe – Magdalena Krajcarz, @MateuszBaca, @PopovicDani et al. doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2…
13/13
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"Around the world, climate change is impacting archaeological sites and landscapes of both local and global significance."
A special section of Antiquity casts light on some of the impacts of climate change on archaeology: (🆓) buff.ly/3WyMOn6
💧 Wetlands have been the site of some of the best-preserved archaeological discoveries, but it is estimated half of the world's wetlands have been lost. Those that remain are at risk from climate change: doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2…
📷: Neolithic trackway found in wetlands
⚓ Shipwrecks and other marine artefacts are at risk from rising sea levels, increasing ocean acidification, extreme weather events, and more. Many of these factors also put coastal heritage at risk: doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2…
🆕: Researchers have identified the ingredients in chemistry formulae from an 2,300-year-old Chinese text, revealing ancient metallurgy was more complex than expected.
The Kaogong ji was written in China in the 1st millennium BC. It's the oldest known technical encyclopedia, detailing items from swords to instruments and how to make them - including formulae for mixing bronze. 2/11
📷: Bronze weapons from around the time of the Kaogong ji
“These recipies were used in the largest bronze industry in Eurasia during this period,” said Dr @RuiliangLiu from the @britishmuseum “Attempts to reconstruct these processes have been made for more than a hundred years, but have failed.” 3/11
The terracotta army, still only partially excavated, guards the mausoleum of Emperor Qin Shi Huang who died in 210 BC. #TombTuesday
The terracotta army might be the most famous part of the Emperor's tomb but he was also buried with replicas of many other parts of imperial life - including administrative offices, parks, stables, and more!
📷: Terracotta bureaucrats and chariot drivers found in an admin office
In one of these accessory pits, thought to represent one of the administrative offices of the Empire, even the remains of over 20 real horses were found!
We've been obsessed with our kitty companions for millennia - people were buried with them (& foxes) during the #Neolithic in the eastern Meditteranean, around 7,000 BC!
🔗 from 2019 (🆓) buff.ly/2Pvm59I
📷: Neolithic burials with 🐈/🦊
Cats are most famously associated with ancient Egypt, where they were kind of a big deal. Many deities were depicted with cat heads and mummified felines were given as votive offerings.
📷: Statuette of the cat-headed deity Bastet. From the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
🆕: Archaeologists have identified a key fortress of the Parthian Empire, which ruled from Turkey to Pakistan ~2,000 years ago, that may be a lost city.
The mountain fortress of Rabana-Merquly, in modern Iraqi Kurdistan, features four-kilometer-long defenses and two associated settlements. 2/10
📷: Location of Rabana-Merquly
Over the past 13 years, archaeologists from Germany and Iraq have been studying the site. They carried out excavations and fully mapped the site - something that could only be done with drones due to the mountainous terrain. 3/10
This is an Inca observatory at Incahullo in Peru, with windows designed to track lunar and solar events.
~500 years after the observatory was used to track the moon, Neil Armstrong took his first small steps on it #OnThisDay in 1969.
The light shining into the structure at sunset moves throughout the year, helping track the farming season.
Looking out the structure, the windows frame key events like the solstice and lunar standstill.
Historical records indicate the Inca capital, Cusco, had a similar observatory.
📸: European drawing of Cusco's main square. In the bottom right is a structure with similar windows, said to be where astronomical observations were made.