First large-scale study of ancient feline DNA charts domestication in Near East and Egypt and the global spread of house cats. Thousands of years before cats came to dominate Internet culture, they swept through ancient Eurasia and Africa carried by early farmers, ancient mariners and even Vikings, finds the first large-scale look at ancient-cat DNA. The study, presented at a conference on 15 September, sequenced DNA from more than 200 cats that lived between about 15,000 years ago and the eighteenth century ad. Researchers know little about cat domestication, and there is active debate over whether the house cat (Felis...