A cat was buried beside a human on Cyprus 9,500 years ago, nearly 6,000 years before the famous cats of Egyptian paintings.

7500 BC · 1600 BC · apart: 5900 years

Cyprus had no wild cats, so people must have brought it by boat.

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The event

• The cat of Shillourokambosc. 7500 BC · Cyprus. At a Neolithic site on Cyprus, an eight-month-old cat was buried beside a human about 9,500 years ago. Cyprus had no wild cats, so the animal came by boat with people: the earliest known evidence of the bond between humans and cats.

Prehistory · 16th century BC

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