FELINE MYTHOLOGY, a feature I wrote for Flaunt Magazine.
5,300 years ago in the village of Quanhucun in Shaanxi, China, cats ate millet alongside the farmers who grew it. The story is told in pieces of bone—mandible, pelvis, tibia, humerus—unearthed and carbon dated by Chinese scientists in 2013. Isotopic data reveals a diet rich in grains, indicating the sharing of food between cats and humans. Variations in the amount of millet to meat suggest that some cats were treated better than others. One cat in particular was quite elderly, its teeth worn down to nubs. Researchers speculate that it was a favorite, provided with food and shelter by humans after a long life protecting the harvest from mice.
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Akopos 