A 9,500 Year-Old Cat

How long has the cat been a favored companion and pet? According to National Geographic News, the carefully interred remains of a human and a cat were found buried with seashells, polished stones, and other decorative artifacts in a 9,500-year-old grave site on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. This find, from the Neolithic village of Shillourokambos, predates early Egyptian art depicting cats by 4,000 years or more. Jean-Denis Vigne, an archaeologist with the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, and colleagues write that the joint burial indicates a strong association between the human and cat and that the feline is possibly the world's oldest known pet cat.

"The process and timing of cat domestication has been terrifically difficult to document," said Melinder Zeder, a curator of Old World archaeology at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and president of the International Council for Archaeozoology.

"In the absence of a collar around its neck, the deliberate interment of this animal with a human makes a strong case that cats had a special place in the daily lives, and in the afterlives, of residents of Shillourokambos," Zeder said.