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December 17, 2004
Friday Catblogging
Late news (April, 04), but still news to me. The association of cats with humankind has been pushed back a few thousand years. Researchers have often given Egyptians living around 4,000 years ago credit for having first domesticated wildcats and then bred the tame felines. However, discoveries on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus indicate that people domesticated felines there by about 9,500 years ago, long before the cat-worshipping Egyptians' time. So there. Consarned Egyptians, always worshipping their cats. Cyprus beat you to it. ...a team led by archaeologist Jean-Denis Vigne of the CNRS-National Museum of Natural History in Paris unearthed a cat's skeleton from a small grave. The animal's remains lay near a larger grave that contained a human skeleton along with offerings such as polished stones and flint tools. The grave is the real clincher. Cat bones have been found associated with human archeological sites before, but the reasoning was that they may have been feral opportunists, sneaking around for scraps. Not enough proof for a committed sceptic. The new feline find underscores the emerging view that colonizers of Cyprus propagated a sophisticated culture, remarks archaeologist Alan H. Simmons of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. A recently completed excavation of a 12,000-year-old site on Cyprus, directed by Simmons, shows that residents there hunted pygmy hippos and several other native animal species nearly to extinction within about 2 millennia. Island settlers then brought over a variety of animals from the mainland, Simmons says. No Hobbits, I suppose. Too bad. Anyway, it gives me a warm feeling to know that people have been putting up with the furry little dictators for ten thousand years. Even in the stone age, a cat could sit by your fire and feign inscrutability.
posted by Justin on 12.17.04 at 06:50 PM
Comments
Sorry guys, but I just don't like cats that much. Any beast that takes every opportunity to stick it's anus in your face has definately a problem with the Master-Pet organization. mdmhvonpa · December 17, 2004 09:29 PM Looking at that CAT SCAN makes me glad I'm not a mouse. Steven Malcolm Anderson (Cato theElder) the Lesbian-worshipping man's-man-admiring myth-based egoist · December 18, 2004 03:54 PM |
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