"I know of course cat's origin-the incubation of "greybeard." The cat was gotten on a stove-has a girl's nose, a hare's head, A tail of snake's venom, claws of a viper, feet of cloudberries, the rest of its body is of the wolf's race." (one of the magic songs of the Finns) One of the last animals to be domesticated by man, the cat is, at present, cosmopolitan in distribution. But how it spread over the globe, where it originated and who its ancestors were remain obscure and no doubt always will. The major reason both recent and paleontological history of cats is shrouded in mystery is the impossibility of distinguishing small wild cats from each other or from the domestic cat by means of their skeletal remains. There are differences but there is such an overlapping of characteristics from one species to another that no positive identification is possible. Today's small cats apparently look very much like their ancestors of eight million years ago. Bone fragments of cats have been discovered from the Lower Pliocene in France and the Upper Pliocene in Italy which are so similar to those of modern wild cats that they do not actually warrant a new species name, and none was given to those found in France. A great variety of cat bones has been discovered in Europe which date from the Pleistocene, that is around one million years ago, when the cat was contemporary with prehistoric man. These have been ascribed to the European and African wild cats, and the Steppe cat as well, the confusion arising from their skeletal similarities as mentioned above. None of the bones has been ascribed to the domestic cat. Even though cat remains were found among the Lake Dwellers, these were always in association with other wild carnivores; this negates the possibility that cats lived in close association with man as a domestic animal. |
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