Comments on: Cat Origins

By: Samantha Vimes

Samantha Vimes — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 05:48:02 +0000

Humanity makes middens; humanity makes middens; humanity trades. I suspect wherever cats first accepted humans as companions, they could have spread quickly. Unless they had religious or economic significance, they wouldn’t necessarily be recorded as part of the cultural record. And so it is possible.

By: William Gulvin

William Gulvin — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 23:16:09 +0000

Ahem … My Wussy Puss tells me that humans obviously evolved from monkeys, but that cats are clearly the product of intelligent design …

By: Jason Thibeault

Jason Thibeault — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:33:26 +0000

Sorry Greg, I meant from ross. I’m practicing my “pithy remark” posting mode, as verbose doesn’t always go over well. Because there is definitely not an altruistic desire for unequivocal science here, you see. (Go Stephanie!)

By: Stephanie Z

Stephanie Z — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 13:49:30 +0000

Hmm. I may be overstating my case a little bit in saying the study shouldn’t have been included. I’m a little overwhelmed at the blatancy of the bias and perhaps not being as accurate as I should be. I should rather say that the study should never have been characterized in the article as support for the article’s thesis.

By: greg laden

greg laden — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 13:34:25 +0000

I have a vested interest and I hope it is not coming through as an undertone. I spend a certain amount of effort over the course of time pointing out and addressing anti-African biases in archaeology, history. We all Africanists do this. But there are a few hundred of us, as opposed to middle easternists, of which there are thousands, and Euopeanists and Asianists, of which there are zillions.

Vested in the search for truth interest!

By: Jason Thibeault

Jason Thibeault — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 13:29:16 +0000

Is it just me or do I detect undertones of vested interest in the matter?

By: Stephanie Z

Stephanie Z — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 13:24:27 +0000

Drop the “on its own,” Ross. It has nothing to say on the subject. It isn’t evidence and shouldn’t have been mentioned in the article. You don’t reach a conclusion by stacking inconclusive data.

By: ross

ross — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 13:13:39 +0000

You are right, the genetic evidence on its own does not exclude north Africa as a domestication site. It is the archaeology of north Africa and the ME that exclude one area and implicate another.

By: Stephanie Z

Stephanie Z — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 12:56:13 +0000

Ross, given what you said about the presence of the subspecies of wildcat in northern Africa and what the SciAm article says about sites tested, I don’t see how the genetic evidence can be said to reflect in any way on the hypothesis that cats became domesticated in northern Africa.

The fact that anyone is using this genetic sampling as evidence that cats were not domesticated in northern Africa strikes me as a bit bizzare. Not in southern Africa, sure, but that wasn’t the competing hypothesis.

By: greg laden

greg laden — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 12:21:41 +0000

The entire continent of Africa, which is the only continent with a contiguous distribution of the wild version of this species, lacks the archaeological evidence necessary to assess this question. Absence of evidence in this case is not evidence of absence.

You could make the same archaeological argument for dogs and conclude a middle eastern origin, but in that case, the genetic evidence is very strong against a ME origin for dogs.

The cat may well have been domesticated (to the extent that they are domesticated) in the ME. I’m not arguing that this is not possible. But the evidence is not conclusive at all.