Joshua J. Mark published on 17 November 2012 Although it has
been commonly accepted that cats were first domesticated in
Egypt 4000 years ago, their history among human beings goes back
much further. Wild cats are now known to have lived among the
people of Mesopotamia over 100,000 years ago and to have been
domesticated there approximately 12,000 BCE at about the same
time as dogs, sheep, and goats. Archaeological excavations in
the past ten years have provided evidence that the Near Eastern
Wildcat is the closest relative of the modern-day domestic cat
and was bred by Mesopotamian farmers, most probably as a means
of controlling pests, such as mice, which were attracted by
grain supplies. The writer David Derbyshire cites a 2007 CE
research project in which, “the study used DNA samples from 979
wild and domestic cats to piece together the feline family tree.
They looked for markers in mitochondrial DNA - a type of genetic
material passed down from mothers to kittens which can reveal
when wild and domestic c