We present the earliest evidence for domestic cat (Felis catus L.,
1758) from Kazakhstan, found as a well preserved skeleton with
extensive osteological pathologies dating to 775–940 cal CE from the
early medieval city of Dzhankent, Kazakhstan. This urban settlement
was located on the intersection of the northern Silk Road route
which linked the cities of Khorezm in the south to the trading
settlements in the Volga region to the north and was known in the
tenth century CE as the capital of the nomad Oghuz. The presence of
this domestic cat, presented here as an osteobiography using a
combination of zooarchaeological, genetic, and isotopic data,
provides proxy evidence for a fundamental shift in the nature of
human-animal relationships within a previously pastoral region. This
illustrates the broader social, cultural, and economic changes
occurring within the context of rapid urbanisation during the early
medieval period along the Silk Road.
Source: The earliest domestic cat on the Silk
Road, an article
by A. F. Haruda, A. R. Ventresca Miller, J. L. A. Paijmans, A. Barlow,
A. Tazhekeyev, S. Bilalov, Y. Hesse, M. Preick, T. King, R. Thomas,
H. Härke & I. Arzhantseva