What domestication means
The 2025 genomic study places the arrival in Europe of the ancestry of modern domestic cats approximately two millennia ago, probably from North Africa.1
In this reading we distinguish between wild, commensal, tame and domestic cats: an early association is not enough, by itself, to call each cat in the registry a pet or domestic.1
Cyprus and early coexistence
The Cyprus case is considered an early sign of human-cat partnership, but it does not by itself fix a single source population or a complete chronology of domestication.1
Coexistence can be an important historical scene without automatically becoming the entire history of the relationship.1
mtDNA 2017
The model published in 2017, based on mitochondrial DNA, interpreted an ancient dispersal of cat lineages in the Mediterranean and European world.2
That proposal responded to the history of maternal lineages; is not interchangeable with subsequent analysis of whole genomes.2
Genomes 2025
The 2025 genomic study places the arrival in Europe of the ancestry of modern domestic cats approximately two millennia ago and probably links it to North Africa.1
This result questions whether a Neolithic dispersal of domestic cats alone explains the arrival of their modern ancestry in Europe.1
Open questions
Isotopic evidence from central Europe describes a commensal ecology of cats close to Neolithic settlements; it does not therefore demonstrate domestic house cats.3
Uncertainties persist about the source populations and how different regional contacts were articulated throughout the process.13