Shillourokambos () is a

Pre-Pottery Neolithic B Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) is part of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, a Neolithic culture centered in upper Mesopotamia and the Levant, dating to years ago, that is, 8800–6500 BC. It was Type site, typed by British archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon ...

(PPNB) site near Parekklisia, 6 km east of

Limassol Limassol, also known as Lemesos, is a city on the southern coast of Cyprus and capital of the Limassol district. Limassol is the second-largest urban area in Cyprus after Nicosia, with an urban population of 195,139 and a district population o ...

in southern

Cyprus Cyprus (), officially the Republic of Cyprus, is an island country in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Situated in West Asia, its cultural identity and geopolitical orientation are overwhelmingly Southeast European. Cyprus is the List of isl ...

. It is located on a low plateau. Excavations began in 1992. The settlement has four phases and was occupied from the end of the 9th millennium to the second half of the 8th millennium. The architecture of phases A and B (8200-7500 BC, calibrated) is characterised by circular

wattle and daub Wattle and daub is a composite material, composite building method in which a woven lattice of wooden strips called "wattle (construction), wattle" is "daubed" with a sticky material usually made of some combination of wet soil, clay, sand, and ...

structures, with post holes cut into the bedrock. Some deep pits may have served as wells. Ca. 300 blades of Anatolian

obsidian Obsidian ( ) is a naturally occurring volcanic glass formed when lava extrusive rock, extruded from a volcano cools rapidly with minimal crystal growth. It is an igneous rock. Produced from felsic lava, obsidian is rich in the lighter element ...

point to trade connections with the mainland.

Sickle A sickle, bagging hook, reaping-hook or grasshook is a single-handed agricultural tool designed with variously curved blades and typically used for harvesting or reaping grain crops, or cutting Succulent plant, succulent forage chiefly for feedi ...

s are made of multiple parts, and projectile points made of bipolar

blade A blade is the Sharpness (cutting), sharp, cutting portion of a tool, weapon, or machine, specifically designed to puncture, chop, slice, or scrape surfaces or materials. Blades are typically made from materials that are harder than those they a ...

s, lacking in the later Khirokitia culture, are common. The site contains wells and cattle enclosures as well. The middle and late phases (7500 BC) conform more closely to the Khirokitia culture with circular stone houses, comparable to those at Kastros. Imported obsidian is rare, and sickles are made from single robust blades. The site is important because it attests to the presence of cattle in the aceramic Neolithic period. Cattle died out in the course of the 8th millennium and were not reintroduced until the ceramic Neolithic. Only dog and pig bones show morphological signs of

domestication Domestication is a multi-generational Mutualism (biology), mutualistic relationship in which an animal species, such as humans or leafcutter ants, takes over control and care of another species, such as sheep or fungi, to obtain from them a st ...

(size reduction), sheep, goat and cattle bones are in the size range of the wild species ( Mouflon, bezoar goat and wild cattle, respectively). The range of bones present point to a killing near the site, thus making a state of pre-domestication probable. Fox and

persian fallow deer The Persian fallow deer (''Dama mesopotamica'') is a deer species once native to all of the Middle East, but currently only living in Iran and Israel. It was reintroduced in Israel. It has been listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List since 2008 ...

are present as well, but seem to have been hunted. There are no bones of the

Holocene The Holocene () is the current geologic time scale, geological epoch, beginning approximately 11,700 years ago. It follows the Last Glacial Period, which concluded with the Holocene glacial retreat. The Holocene and the preceding Pleistocene to ...

dwarf fauna present in Shillourokambos. Shillourokambos is also the site where the oldest evidence of human domestication of cats was found. Historians previously accounted

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

as the earliest site of cat domestication due to the clear depictions of house cats in ancient Egyptian paintings about 3,600 years old. However, in 2004, a Neolithic grave was excavated in Shillourokambos, Cyprus that contained skeletons, laid close to one another, of both a human and a cat. The grave is estimated to be 9,500 years old, pushing back the earliest known feline-human association significantly. The cat specimen is large and closely resembles the African wildcat (''Felis silvestris lybica''), rather than present-day domestic cats.

References

Sources

*Jean Guilaine/Francois Briois, Parekklisha Shillourokambos: an early Neolithic site in Cyprus. In: S. Swiny (ed.), The earliest prehistory of Cyprus. From Colonization to exploitation American archaeological research institute Monograph Series 2 (Boston American School of oriental research 2001), 37–54. * Vigne J.-D., Carrère I., Briois F. and Guilaine J., 2011. The Early Process of the Mammal Domestication in the Near East: New Evidence from the Pre-Neolithic and Pre-Pottery Neolithic in Cyprus. Current Anthropology, S52, 4: S255-S271 {{Coord missing, Cyprus 1992 archaeological discoveries Archaeological sites in Cyprus Former populated places in Cyprus Pre-Pottery Neolithic B Neolithic settlements