History and Housecats, a tale of Civilization

hi on the history guide I have a degree in history and I love history and if you love history too this is the channel for you the establishment of sea trade routes was one of the most important events in human history while humans have been using seaworthy vessels to populate Oceania as early as fifty thousand years ago it wasn't really until about the fifth century BC that sea trade routes between civilizations started to occur those early sea trade routes established connections between cultures they moved Goods enormous distances and they laid the foundation for a economic activity that is still vitally important today when 90% of the world's trade goods are moved by the International shipping industry and while many technologies had to be developed to develop human sea trade one innovation that came millennia earlier was surprisingly key that innovation had already played a central role in one of the most important developments in human cultural history and it still plays a central role in the high-tech world of social media I'm talking of course of one of the most important events ever to occur in human history the domestication of felis Silvestri's catus otherwise known as the house cat while our understanding of the prehistory of humanity is constantly evolving homo sapiens or anatomically modern humans were thought to have arisen in africa between two and three hundred thousand years ago but for the vast majority of that time somewhere around 95% of the time that humans have spent on earth humans were exclusively hunter-gatherers nomads with no Sat home it was during that period that humans begin a process that would be critical to the development of the human race we started to domesticate animals while the origin of domesticated dogs is a matter of some dispute most scientists agree that they were the first animals domesticated possibly as far back as 40,000 years ago from a species of wolf that is now extinct wolves were almost certainly domesticated for the purpose of hunting in fact one theory suggests that wolves in humans domesticated each other and that human hunting techniques seem to change with the domestication of dogs it was a symbiotic relationship that would allow both species to prosper but then around 12,000 years ago the most profound change in the history of human culture started to occur Neolithic Revolution after hundreds of thousands of years of wandering the earth as hunters and gatherers in a period of just a few thousand years baths swaths of the world's human population gave up their nomadic lifestyle and started living in settlements their numerous theories about what drove the sudden and dramatic change many dealing with climate changes it occurs as glaciers receded at the end of the last great Ice Age this is a period when more animal species were domesticated including sheep and goats and later pigs horses and donkeys cattle chickens and camels but most importantly this period included the domestication of crops the selective breeding of cereal grasses to make them more amenable to agriculture it was this change that while decreasing the variety of food sources allowed people to achieve food surpluses requiring the storage of excess food and that is where felis Silvestri's catus comes in as people started to store grain that grain attracted vermin notably rats and mice rats and mice can be devastating to food stocks a 1995 study of markets in Pakistan found that just 40 rats can consume 185 kilograms of rice in a year and typically spoil or contaminate three times as much as they eat and in the presence of food they can be incredibly prolific just one pair of rats can produce as many as 10,000 offspring in a single year even today mice and rats eat and spoil enough rice in Asia to feed an estimated 200 million people and mice and rats are notorious for spreading disease and of course cats excel at hunting mice and rats and one type of cat in particular was especially suited to domestication the Near Eastern Wildcat also known as the African Wildcat the species is native to North and East Africa the Near East in the Arabian Peninsula genetic research suggests the species arose somewhere between 70 to a hundred thousand years ago and while there are many wild cat species this species was unique something in their genetic variants some innate curiosity made them more willing to approach humans who encouraged them as a means of controlling Behrman this wasn't a fluke researchers at Oxford University have found five different matriarchal lineages from which all modern domestic cats belong that indicates that cats of this species were recruited across a wide area over time the species was predicted towards its job while the original domestication with October Kurt in Egypt new evidence suggests it occurred even earlier in Mesopotamia but once domesticated they were popular cat seemed to follow tribes as they migrated across the ancient world in general throughout Africa Asia and Europe wherever humans settled down during the Neolithic Revolution they brought cats with them cats were in essence a key technology in the most important event ever in human culture it is hard to overstate what this means the Neolithic Revolution first allowed people to settle this eventually resulted in greater population density which then gave rise to political structures and eventually civilizations and thus in some sense you can say that cats were responsible for the rise of human civilization they were so revered in Egypt for example that it was illegal to export them at least as early as the 5th century BC the penalty for killing a cat in Egypt was death cats likewise played a major role the mythology of many cultures they are part of the literary tradition in India where the story of puss and boots is actually derived from an Indian folk tale from the 5th century BC in person legend a magician created cats for the hero Rustam weaving them from smoke flame and two of the brightest stars in the sky a beckoning cat is good luck in Japan associated with the God of mercy and then ancient Chinese myth says the cats were sent down by the gods to oversee the running of creation but were too fond of sleeping to do a good job of it but the utility of cats it still not reached its zenith having played a critical role in the rise of human civilizations they would play another critical role in connecting those civilizations together by studying ancient cat DNA researchers have been able to determine that cat populations have a second great expansion starting around the fifth century BC when cats of Egyptian lineage were found to spread very quickly throughout Eurasia and Africa the implication is simple as soon as civilization started trading with each other by sea those sailors started carrying cats with them the reason for the ship's cat is very similar for the reason that they were domesticated in the first place pest control rats and mice can cause significant damage eating and contaminating the ship stores needed to feed the same ones among voyages damaging cargo and even destroying critical parts of the ship nine ropes sales and even wood quite the issue on a wooden ship rats and mice can even damage wiring on modern ships among the famous seafarers who apparently carried rats were the Vikings we're a cat of Egyptian lineage was found in a Viking burial site in northern Germany the far-ranging vikings whose own mythology includes cats may then have brought them through to England Scotland and Western Europe in fact cats were so integrated with world trade that the etymology of the word cat is unknown unable to be determined because it has been shared so widely among the virgin cultures making the word a classic example of a Warner warrant having provided their essential service to facilitate yet another evolution in human culture chips cats remain a tradition to this day and some have become quite famous Blacky for example the ship's cat aboard HMS Prince of Wales garnered international attention when she signaled out Prime Minister Winston Churchill on the state visit in 1941 Bucky was renamed Churchill and later survived the sinking of the Prince of Wales or chimbley the ship's cat on the training bark picton castle who circumnavigated the globe five times before retiring to land in Nova Scotia in 2010 or the sad tale of mrs. chippy a companion to Henry McNish the ship's carpenter on Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated 1914 Arctic expedition when Shackleton ship the endurance was crushed by ice Shackleton ordered the cat to be killed as he did not think it would survive an ice crossing the decision was part of a contributed Manisha's brief rebellion against Akal tit despite the bad blood McNish was instrumental in the successful voyage in open boats to find rescue McNish 'as grave in new zealand is adorned with a statue of his beloved mrs. chippy and may be the most distinguished of the ships cats was simon the ship's cats of the frigate hms amethyst who not only single-handedly eliminated a below deck rat infestation but who survived grievous injury from chinese shell fire during the Yangtze incident in 1949 action for which he was awarded the dickin medal commonly called the Victoria Cross for animals and was promoted to the rank of able sea cat despite their centuries long tradition of keeping ships cats the Royal Navy band cats and other pets in 1975 and yet ships cats are still very popular on private and commercial vessels today in 2017 for example the USA Today ran a story about the adoption of a kitten named Lilu as the new ship's cat aboard the tall masted schooner of Lynx a fitting heir to a proud tradition while there are still working cats today for the most part today cats are kept companionship not for controlling mice and rats and that tradition actually dates all the way back to Roman times where Romans used domesticated weasels to catch rats but kept cats this treasured pets at some points in history cats have faced gross discrimination they were sometimes killed wholesale at various times and in various places because of their supposed connection to witches and yet cats are still enormous ly popular today as anyone who follows social media can attest and while worldwide more households have dogs households with cats tend to have more animals and so house cats far outnumber pet dogs in the world today a fitting homage to the underappreciated role that felis Silvestri's catus is played in human history i'm history guy now hope you enjoyed this edition of my series five minutes of history short snippets of forgotten history 5 to 10 minutes long and if you did enjoy please go ahead and click that thumbs up button which is there on your left if you have any questions or comments feel free to write those in the comment section I'll be happy to respond as you'd like 5 minutes more forgotten history all you need to do is subscribe [Music]

Channel: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Views: 458,798

Rating: 4.9646058 out of 5

Keywords: the history guy, history, cat, domestication of cats, world history, history guy, felis catus

Id: E2383ElpU4U

Length: 9min 58sec (598 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 18 2018