The earliest domestic cat on the Silk Road | Hacker News Reader

The earliest domestic cat on the Silk Road

nature.com

46 pointsbenbreen10 comments

Interesting to read all of the methods for determining the health of the cat at the time of death.

Sadly, the "pathologies in the skeleton suggest that the cat from Dzhankent had a physically challenging life."

The good news is that people cared about this cat, "They carefully cared for and tended to this animal throughout its life, providing high quality food and medical care."

That said, the funeral for the animal was "expedient" in that it was basically left in a dump or "midden" (new word to me) at the end.

It is some comfort realizing how entirely human it is to care for cats. Though, it is also possible cat toxoplasma has just been incredibly effective.

A tiny lion defending your foodstock didn't need an infection whispering into pysche to be loved :3

Edit: also consider the entertainment they provide.

Am I the only one who was confused by title. Thinking it was about illegal animalnsales on dark web?

I had to think for a couple seconds to figure out what you were referring to, but now I understand how you were confused! Maybe the title should be updated to include the date.

The original silk road was a "dark web" by the standards of maritime nations, being an overland set of trade routes far from any coast.

Oddly, WP[1] on the decline of the overland routes doesn't mention the invention of the carrack[2] and related navigational techniques as having allowed a blue-water seaborne alternative trade, which has pretty much been the dominant pattern ever since.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road#Decline_and_disinteg...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrack

Cryptokitties, but you're buying cats on the Internet with Bitcoin.

The world needs more of this kind of important research.

Yeah, you get domesticated cats where there are grain crops, but not with nomadic herding.

So this kind of thing provides information about the time of the transition from pastoral to agrarian societies.

> Yeah, you get domesticated cats where there are grain crops

Right. You need grain crops to make cheezburgers, after all.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com