The Genomic make-up of ancient wild and domestic cats from the Levant and North Africa

The domestic cat (Felis catus) descends from the North African and Near Eastern wildcat subspecies Felis lybica lybica. Its close association with humans facilitated its global spread, making it one of the most successful mammal species. Recent archaeogenomic and zooarchaeological studies indicate that domestic cats were introduced to Europe within the last 2,000 years, much later than previously assumed. However, the scarcity of genomic data from the Near and Middle East and North Africa leaves key questions unresolved, particularly regarding the origins of domestic cats and the contributions of the two proposed centres of domestication, the Neolithic Levant and Pharaonic Egypt. To fill this gap of knowledge, we generated 60 low-coverage (0.1- to 0.6-fold) genomes from cat remains from North Africa, the Near and Middle East, and the Iberian and Italian peninsulas dated from the 7th millennium BCE to the 15th century CE, along with 23 low- to high-coverage (0.4- to 15-fold) genomes of present-day and museum wildcats from the Levant and central and northern Africa. Our findings suggest that North Africa was the original centre of cat domestication. As domestic cats spread to the Levant and the Middle East, they most likely acquired Levantine genetic ancestry through admixture with local F. l. lybica populations. This work lay the foundations for further disentangling the origins of domestic cats and tracing their expansion across Southwest Asia.

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