How Humans Created Cats
Following the invention of agriculture, one thing led to another, and ta da: the world's most popular pet.
Why do people keep cats?
As a non-cat person, I have long been perplexed by this state of affairs, in which millions and millions of humans around the world have wound up sharing a home with these odd (and—fine—kind of cute) creatures. How did this come to be?
For a long time, archaeologists have hunted for early evidence of this relationship between humans and cats. They've found a wildcat buried near a human on Cyprus from about 9,500 years ago, a proximity suggesting some sort of relationship between the two species. And from ancient Egypt there are paintings, about 4,000 years old, that depict cats, often sitting beneath the chairs of women.
But these bits of history did
