The dispersal of domestic cats from North Africa to Europe around 2000 years ago

We generated a genomic time transect spanning the past 11,000 years and found that cats previously identified as carrying a F. l. lybica mtDNA clade from Neolithic and Chalcolithic southeast Europe and Anatolia, dated between 9500 and 6300 years ago, were F. silvestris wildcats whose ancestors hybridized with F. l. lybica. Ancient genomes revealed an increasing trend of African wildcat ancestry ranging from 9 to 34% eastward, from Bulgaria to central Anatolia. The earliest cat belonging to the genetic cluster of as F. l. lybica and F. catus in Europe originates from the site of Genoni, in Sardinia (Italy), and is dated to ~2200 years ago. This cat is genetically similar to present-day wildcats in Sardinia, and they all appear to be closely related to a F. l. lybica wildcat from Morocco. All other archaeological cats from Europe and Anatolia included in the cluster of F. l. lybica and F. catus are dated from ~2000 years ago onward. They possessed the typical gene pool of modern domestic cats and shared more affinities with modern African wildcats than with their Levantine relatives. Their rapid dispersal across the Mediterranean in the past 2000 years marked a demographic expansion recorded in their maternal ancestries. Our findings challenge the commonly held view of a Neolithic introduction of domestic cats to Europe, instead placing their arrival several millennia later. We redefine the timing of cat dispersal by identifying at least two waves of introduction to Europe. The first dispersal most likely featured wildcats from Northwest Africa that were introduced to Sardinia and founded the island’s present-day wild population. A distinct and yet-unknown population in North Africa sourced a second dispersal not later than 2000 years ago that established the gene pool of modern domestic cats in Europe.