Until now, historians thought the ancient Egyptians were the first to domesticate cats around 4000 years ago. But some evidence suggests cats were culturally important outside Egypt long before that. Stone and clay figurines of cats up to 10,000 years old have turned up in Syria, Turkey and Israel. And archaeologists have found 9000 to 9500-year-old cat bones in Cyprus, which has no native feline species.

"The first discovery of cat bones on Cyprus showed that human beings brought cats from the mainland to the islands, but we couldn't decide if these cats were wild or tame," says Jean-Denis Vigne of the French research organisation CNRS and the National Museum of Natural History in Paris.

But now a team led by Vigne has found the remains of a Neolithic cat that seems to have been a pet in a grave at the ancient site of Shillourokambos in Cyprus. The site contains the ruins of a large village that was inhabited 9000 to 13,000 years ago.

The cat belonged to the tabby species Felis silvestris, the wildcat from which domestic cats are descended. Its remains lie just 40 centimetres from a 9500-year-old human grave containing offerings such as stone tools and seashells. The human and cat skeletons are in identical states of preservation. The skeletons were positioned symmetrically, with both heads pointing west. This may have been intentional. The cat died when it was about eight months old, and while the cause of death is a mystery, there are no signs that the animal was butchered for food (Science, vol 304, p 259).

Vigne thinks the proximity of the human skeleton suggests the person had a strong bond with the cat, which might have been killed to go to the grave with its master. It made sense for early agricultural societies to mingle with cats, he adds, because cats would have killed the mice that nibbled their grain supplies.