Guys are friendly and haven't seen you for a long time! In order to let cat friends have a deeper understanding of how to raise cats, Xiao Tiantian specially "retreated" for two months and prepared a series of cat knowledge science.
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" data-track="56" > the origin of the cat</h1>
If you want to understand a cat, you must first understand its ancestors for eighteen generations! The ancestor of the cat - is a beast, I believe many people like me are curious, how can there be such a cute little thing as a cat in the world? Where did they come from?
The ancestors who studied cats did not know that cats and dogs were born from the same root. The ancestors of cats were first a carnivore called "slender-toothed beasts", which lived about 50 million years ago, and then slowly evolved into the "original red panda" known as the ancestor of cats (of course, not the red pandas we see now), and the original red pandas are also called the first cats. After 20 million years of evolution, the slender-toothed beast transformed into the first cat, and already had the shadow of a feline on its body.
The evolution of cats
According to the results of mitochondrial DNA analysis, the direct ancestors of domestic cats are Libyan cats that inhabited the dry belt of the Middle East about 130,000 years ago. The Libyan cat evolved from the original red panda and still lives in some parts of Africa and Southeast Asia. At that time, the ancient Egyptians fed many Libyan cats in order to protect the barn from rat infestation, which is identified as the origin of the domestic cat.
In an era when humans used hunter-gatherer as their primary means of obtaining food, cats and humans were in a competitive relationship. But when humans began to engage in farming activities, because cats preyed on mice, which in turn protected crops, the relationship between the two also changed to a symbiotic relationship. Like other domestic animals, cats are self-domesticated: they choose to approach human life because that's what interests them. In order to integrate into the human habitat, the ancestors of cats underwent changes in physique and behavior, and eventually formed the most successful of the cat race: domestic cats.
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" data-track="56" > the origin of modern domestic cats</h1>
Although ancient Egypt has the earliest historical records of domestic cats, Egypt is not necessarily the earliest residence of domestic cats. In Jeremiah, Israel, the teeth of a cat from 9000 BC were found. On the islands of the Mediterranean, cat remnants from 5000 BC have also been found. Cyprus was not inhabited by feral cats at the time, and those cats were probably brought there as pets by people. In Egypt, the earliest remains date from 4000 BC, in a tomb in Mostaloda, central Egypt, where a gazelle and a kitten accompanied a person to sleep underground, and scholars who study Egypt believe that this cat is his pet.
Around 4000 BC, many domestic cats were raised in the granaries and cellars of Egypt's first permanent villages on the fertile banks of the Nile. Here, domestic cats not only get food, but also hide from attacks from large predators.
Because of the rounded and fluffy face of the domestic cat, it has long been loved by egyptians. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, "In Egypt, if a cat dies, the owner will shave his eyebrows and mourn; if there is a fire in the house, the owner usually rescues the cat in the house first." He even recorded the reasons for the defeat of the Egyptians in the famous Battle of Peleus amam: "In 525 BC, king Cambis of the Persian Empire led a large army to the Egyptian outpost Peleus am, where he encountered the Egyptian army, but the Egyptians were unwilling to fight back because of the image of the holy cat painted on the shield of the Persians.
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" data-track="56" when > cat entered China</h1>
Chinese the historical origin of cat breeding is very early, and the "Daya Han Yi" in the Book of Poetry writes: "There are bears and pís, there are cats and tigers", comparing cats with tigers, bears and other beasts of prey, the cat at this time should be a beast that has not yet been domesticated.
The Book of Rites and Suburban Animals records that "eight waxes are used to worship the four sides". The fifth of the eight laras in the Book of Rites is the cat and the tiger, and the cat is sacrificed to catch mice. The Book of Rites also records that the ancient cat was a valuable thing, and as a gentleman of the nobility, it was often used to express gratitude in return. "The gentleman of the ancients, so that he will repay it, the way cat, for its eater voles also." The Han Feizi also records: "Make the chickens night, and make the tanuki hold the rats, all use their abilities." "The tanuki here is the cat.
The earliest cat specimen found in China's archaeology is the cat skeleton found in 1997 in the Neolithic site of the Miaodigou culture in Quanhu Village, Shaanxi Province, indicating that there were cats at that time to help humans catch rats that stole food, and carbon fourteen tests showed that this cat lived at least 5300 years ago. It shows that the history of cat breeding in China is at least 5300 years old, which is the earliest evidence of the symbiotic relationship between cats and humans found so far.
In 1972, among the various burial items excavated from the Mawangdui Han Tomb in Changsha, the most exquisite was the "Junxing Food" tanuki pattern lacquer food plate. The outside of the plate is painted with cloud patterns, and the inside of the disk is painted with cirrus patterns, tanuki cat patterns, turtle patterns, etc. Basically, there is a tanuki cat painted in the center of the bottom wall of each lacquer plate, and only one painting depicts a turtle. Tanuki cats are outlined with a single line of vermilion lacquer, coated with gray-green paint, and painted with vermilion eyes, ears, beards, claws, and tail patterns. The cat has round eyes, long tail with vertical ears and a little tattoo on its body. Dongfang Shuo, a famous minister during the han wudi period, wrote in his "Reply to the Difficulty of Riding a Horse": "It was better to throw rats in the deep palace than to lame cats. Although it is a satire on the great general Huo's illness, it also reflects the domesticated domestic cats that had been domesticated in the Western Han Dynasty.
It may be that wild cats are not easy to domesticate, more as a rare practical species, only more experienced can be domesticated, so between the Han and Tang Dynasties, there are not many records about cats. The history of cat breeding in China did not slowly dilute the function of catching rats until the Tang and Song dynasties, and gradually became people's companions and entered people's daily lives.
Thank you cat friends for listening! This time to share so much, the next issue to share with you "Chinese pet cat cultural history", the next issue we will not see or disperse.