Posted on 08/08/2018 10:58:35 PM PDT by BenLurkin
n the first large-scale study of ancient feline DNA, the results reveal how our inscrutable friends were domesticated in the Near East and Egypt some 15,000 years ago, before spreading across the globe and into our hearts.
The study was presented at the International Symposium on Biomolecular Archaeology in Oxford, UK back in 2016, and sequenced DNA from 209 cats that lived between 15,000 and 3,700 years ago - so from just before the advent of agriculture right up to the 18th century. Found in more than 30 archaeological sites in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, these ancient feline specimens are helping researchers to piece together the beginnings of an animal that we share our beds with, but know surprisingly little about.
"We don't know the history of ancient cats. We do not know their origin, we don't know how their dispersal occurred," one of the team, Eva-Maria Geigl, an evolutionary geneticist from the Institut Jacques Monod in France, told Ewen Callaway at Nature.
Analysing the DNA of cats found in ancient Egyptian tombs, burial sites in Cyprus, and an old Viking settlement in Germany, the team found that cats likely experienced not one, but two, waves of expansion during their early history.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencealert.com ...
Ditto!
:^D
Runes! They weren’t up to recording history, as an alphabet. That, and Icelandic Saga Tradition, had to wait till after the conversion and introduction of Church Latin to git ‘er done.
95% of all the Runic inscriptions archeologists have discovered are just 2 words carved on sticks.
“Kiss Me.”
A come on. I expect bored young men sat around carving extras in the evening.
Obviously.
Cats were a BIG deal in those days... Don’t make fun of them.
LOL!
(You knew that was coming.)
Those are some fat, furry felines!
Why Do 16th-Century Manuscripts Show Cats With Flaming Backpacks?
National Geographic | 3-10-2014 | Brad Scriber
Posted on 3/16/2014, 9:29:43 AM by Renfield
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3133793/posts
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