Cats were found in excavations of sites in Jericho (Jordan) dating from the late sixth millennium or early fifth millennium BC. By the beginning of the third millennium BC, cats seem already to have been much more widespread. These regions were inhabited by further sub-species of wild cat, which may well have also been the original form in that area. It is very likely, however, that in all these early instances the cats must be regarded simply as tamed wild animals. For there is a distinct difference between mere taming, an accidental habituation to man, of which any animal is capable, and a continuing domestication process lasting over generation.
Finds of artifacts and paintings from the Badari culture in the Egyptian New Stone Age, dating from 4000 BC, show that Kaffir cats were kept at that time. With the New Kingdom in Egypt, finds and representations become increasingly frequent, which suggests that cats were being introduced into the home, a genuine domestication. Egyptian tomb decorations depict the cat assisting at the hunt, as a pet, as a companion to man and as a divine symbol. Given the cat’s territorial orientation, an important precondition of its domestication was, therefore, that the people seeking to achieve this should be settled in one place, which of course they were during Egypt’s period of high culture. No doubt the cat was also tamed by nomadic tribes in many other parts of Africa, but this never amounted to true domestication.
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