Ridiculous HistoryHouse cats are astonishing, fascinating, and at-times frustrating little creatures -- yet they've made a comfortable home with humans, spreading in step with every civilization they join. In today's episode, Ben, Noel and Max explore an intriguing theory that busts more than a few stereotypes: What if Vikings were responsible for spreading cats even farther around the world?
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the show Ridiculous Histories. Thank you so much for tuning in. Jeez, we've got the energy here. We've got some meyows. That's our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Yeow.
So you're Noel Brown, I've been bullet Nola. Is safe to say that all three of us enjoy the feline.
Enjoy is a strong word. I know I do enjoy a good cat, but they're a little caddy. Really. The only way to describe on this is they just like they don't care about us. You found, Max, you found a really great quote from Winston church Hill himself that dogs look up to us, cats look down on us, and pigs treat us as equals. I'm not sure who this is more insulting, too. I think it's the humans that really come out on the losing end of this particular expression.
I think he was probably insulting someone at a diplomatic function, likely classic Winston. What was his other quote? You know, someone said, you, sir, are drunk, and he said, very well, but tomorrow I'll be sober and you'll still be ugly.
Yeah, And or it's good. But yeah, like we said, cats are really like catty cat like not really, they kind of are their own thing. You know if you've seen the meme where it's like a cat like with like bisecting and there's like a weird alien inside steering it.
Yeah, and cats also not to get to brain stuff about it. Check out the earlier videos on domestication. Cats are arguably one of the only quote unquote domestic animals that domesticated themselves.
Of course they like them.
Yeah, that's classic cat. You may be surprised to realize that given cats ancient history with humanity. Overall, cats are pretty popular in most parts of the world. There is purportedly one group of historical people that have perhaps popularized our feline friends to the world overall. Caveat, caveat, caveat. Let's go to Amy to Canon writing for Britannica, who says, quote, while.
Vikings don't exactly have a reputation for being cuddly, their travel companions do. Yeah, I'm talking about cats. Vikings loved a cat.
So in today's somewhat subjective and somewhat biased episode of Ridiculous History, we're going to talk about the origins of what we call the house cat, and how Vikings may have helped spread the cat as a pet around the world. Again caveat kind of this one is family friendly. So if you happen like us to have some cats in your household, listen in and let's see if your cat approves. Also, send us cat photos on a ridiculous historians on Facebook.
They'll probably wander away halfway through. It's okay, we're not offended. We see you. Take a quick word from a tiny sponsor, and then we'll be back with this tale.
We have returned. One reason that we're going to be brief with the history of cats is because A there are multiple great pieces of scholarship written about it. B there are tons of podcasts out there that are probably just about cats and see cats like without even introducing the toxoplasmosis argument. A lot of people who are on board with cats right about them. So cats are in the historical record in a way that many other animals simply are not.
Yeah, and they're pictured in a lot of imagery surrounding ancient civilizations. They figure into a lot of lore and the kind of religious iconography as well.
Yeah. Yeah, If we go back to our pals of Britannica. If we go way way back, Max, can we get some way back music?
Perfect? Perfect? Oh, dang it.
All right, keep it it, Britannica says. After the non avian dinosaurs became extinct, mammals became the dominant life forms. The first feline like mammal, the prolurus, evolved about thirty million years ago, and it is currently believed that all true cat species evolved from this small guy who was a predator who looked a lot like a civet. Do we remember what a civet looks like.
Kind of like a cat like raccoon. They're pretty cute and they're still around. Yeah, exactly. You can look up a lot of pictures of civet. Some of them to have i don't know, almost leopard like coats. Yeah, actually most of them seem to have that pattern. Yeah.
Yeah, they're cool guys. And if you look at cats that resemble today's friendly felines, they first appear about five point three to three point six million years ago, And it reminds me of the convergent evolution of the crab like how most animal like many animals, at some point tend to evolve into a crab like form, or like how crocodiles hit they're winning formula and just never changed it.
If I mentioned to you that one of my nicknames form my partner is the crab, she has evolved into a crab like form, just tick with that and use your imagination do what you will with it.
So a big thing with what we call the felids, which is the group name felines fall under felid. The big thing they have is I would say a flexibility, a fluidity kind of natural inborn parkour cat like reflexes. You might say, oh, just so, yeah, and there are adaptations that occur. You can see many felids or felines around the world who are evolved differently due to environmental pressures, primarily the prey they chase. Because your average housecat is an obligate carnivore, meaning that it must eat meat to survive for sure.
And I think we've all probably seen, however, quote unquote domesticated, your house cat might be given the chance to run around outside, they're likely gonna find something to kill and gift it to you.
Yeah, because they're worried about you. It's like our power lord, Yeah, our Vogelbaum used to send me photos of the different animals that her cat would kill into our outdoor cat and bring to her sometimes in what she believed were purposeful displays.
Oh, I had a cat that is no longer with us years ago that I shared with my bestie and roomy at the time, Frank. And it would, I swear to God, it would be like Serial Killer tableaus, you know, where it's like the mouse has been dissected and it's dismembering parts are arranged in like a weird cruciform or it's bizarre.
And so we know the we'll get to the vikings in a second. What we need to established here first. So we've got the ancient history, the evolution. Next, where do the humans and the cats meet largely unclear, but we know ever since recorded human history about fifteen ten thousand years ago, with the rise of agriculture in the Middle East, in the Tigris, Euphrates and so on, the cat was always there. Definitely, people ate cats, Definitely, people used cat fur as of pelt. But a partnership began, and it was what we would call a symbiotic relationship, meaning both sides of the partnership gained some value from their interaction, humans were no longer a hunter gatherers. We're all sitting in the same place. We're growing crops. We're hoping those crops will keep us alive through winter. What comes along with word grain rats, dude, rodents nice.
They love that stuff, especially if it gets moist or whatever and starts to emit like a bit of a stronger smell. You're gonna get some mice, some rodents, some rats, and as we know, cats are really good at hunting those guys down and torturing and murdering them.
Obligate carnivores again, So now the human outpost become a easy way to find your own smaller prey. Right, it's not necessarily that the cats liked the humans. It's that it's that the cats liked a predictable food resource.
And that relationship is largely continued to the right.
It reminds me of the old, the old question that is still debated in modern evenings. What is the most successful life form on the planet. If you measure it by wait, it may be the ants. If you measure it by behavior, well, the housecats doesn't have to do a lot of work for itself. As a matter of fact, housecats are a menace to surrounded wildlife if they're outdoors.
Birds especially if I'm not mistaken right, they can actually decimate entire populations of certain species. Yeah, they can endanger worse than those wind turbines everyone's always screaming about.
I want a wind turban so bad.
I like Kyri, I like really going hard on calling them a turban instead of tur I just something about the mouthfeel if that doesn't for me.
So Eventually, way before people knew about toxo plasmosis gandhi, people started worshiping cats. They attain socio religious significance. Cats held a huge status in Egypt. There are even gods that are that are anthropomorphic.
Cats, I would argue, do in no small part to their mind controllabilities. Yeah.
Also they do protect the grain, They do protect the granaries. So this is we can see why this would be religiously important. Cats in each in Egypt were cherished pets. They were seeing as sort of the protectors of life and stability. They were good luck.
Well, I mean, anytime we see a force of nature that either provides or has the potential to destroy food sources or infrastructure, of these kind of civilizations. There often is some religious connection that pops up, you know, a bit of worship just to make sure that because if we lost the cats, maybe the mice would take over everything. There is that very functional kind of respect and appreciation and need for these things that in the way they kind of do business. The Egyptians converted would seem to worship a kind of need to work worship them.
Yeah, Egyptian royalty was known to adorn their cats in gold trappings people in the lower classes that not one percenters made in war jewelry depicting cats. There are also apocryphal accounts of Egyptian forces. Because Egypt was an expansionist empire for a lot of times, there were apocryphal accounts of Egyptian forces turning back and refusing to fight because the opposing force strapped cats onto the bodies of the soldiers.
Oh my gosh, Kamakazi cats.
They were like, we can't kill the cats.
Oh, that's that's a very different kind of again, it's like a reverse of that kind of apocryphal. Apocryphal. It's like the cat equivalent of human shields.
It's bizarre, Yes, the cat equivalent the the other stuff we do in terms of physical record of history is that cats were deified such that they might be mummified and preserved along with their loved ones, or if they were a beloved cat. There were also little mouse mummies that were mummified, So the cats had a snack in the afterlife.
Do you think they just keep eating it over and over and over again the one mouse that gets mummified. It seems like a real hellish existence after LifeWise for that roadent.
Huh, Yeah, not great for the mouse. Also, we know cats have been clearly deified or prized in other cultures.
If you go back.
Not too far north in the Mediterranean, you'll see cretion wall tiles dating back to sixteen hundred BCE that depict cats who are trained to hunt for the humans.
Yeah, that's crete right, the island of crete in Greece. That you also saw a lot of pictions in other art and in literature that indicates cats were there from the fifth century BC on. Now to mention in China, where we also saw cats featured in some kind of tile functional tiles from five hundred BC.
Yeah, and people in Arab populations and the nation of Japan, they didn't meet the cat until about six hundred CE as far as we know, which I do draw exception to the scholarship they're regarding Arab communities because the Middle East is not that far away from Egypt. So I do believe what we're looking at there is just physical record. The earliest again record of cats, if you go a little further north in Britain, dates to about nine to thirty six CE, when the Prince of South Central Wales sounds like every time I hear south Central, I feel like the guy has a rap album. But Uedel Da made a law protecting cats. Specifically, you can kill other animals. Badgers are fair game, but guys be cool about the cats.
Cool cats, be cool cats.
Yeah. Yeah, And this is where it gets us to the turnin aal to the focus of today's episode.
Vikings cats, Yeah, it would seem like not necessarily a match made in Valhalla. As we mentioned, Vikings are not particularly known for their cuddly and animal loving natures, but you know what, cats, that's sort of a bit of a misnomer about them too. They can be pretty vicious, with the whole serial killer displays and just the inherent carnivorous nature.
Yeah, a cat is sort of a Viking when you think about it.
Yeah, especially when you put those horned helmet on it and give it a little braid. Yeah.
Oh yeah, you've seen doctor Vankman. That's the name of one of my cats. So Vikings, like sailing. The domestic house cat is notoriously statistically not going to be a fan of water. The issue is the size of the boats. If we go to Weston Williams writing for Christian Science Monitor, we see that Egyptian cats were often taken a board watercraft to deal with mice and rats. So it makes sense if your ship is large enough to have a cat, who is your ratting officer?
You know?
Yeah, if I can jump in real quick. I actually learned this when I was younger, so I think I've told you all. My dad grew ubout boat doc. Basically like he grew up on a lake in this Great Lakes Chain up in Michigan, and I remember like talking to him saying something about kats on. It's like, Dad, why would a cat ever be on a boat? And he told me this fact. I'm like, oh, that makes sense. They mus not like it when the boat goes down, and he's like Max, no one likes when the boat goes down.
Well, that''s all the true. And in my mind I'm thinking too, like this would be largely while the boats are docked, right, or would there be a seafaring cat that would like go out on the voyage.
There are seafaring cats even now. Some of the most famous seafaring cats in uh other wars in World War One and World War Two, they were they were considered part of the crew and they also got promoted if they killed enough.
Vermin, I love the idea of a seafaring cat wearing a little naval uniform and like steering the ship, you know, behind the giant wheel.
I know we have an episode about that years back now, I don't remember how long ago, but about a heroic animals and a lot of them were cats.
M h they were. They know what's going on. So let's go to Eva Marie Geigel, who is a paleo geneticist at the Institute jus Manolde. And this person led one of the biggest studies about the interaction of cats with the early humans. It was published in Nature dot com. It's the palaeogenetics of Cat dispersal in the ancient world. It's gourse, it's got yeah, it's got a lot of authors.
And they told ABC in an interview, we found the first time that in prehistoric times, cats from the Near East and in classical times from Egypt accompanied people on their journeys, thereby conquering the ancient world. They were the ancestors of our present day domestic cats all over the world.
And the study is pretty smart. They analyzed mitochondrial DNA from the remains of cats across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. They looked at two hundred cat to davers cat davers, and the cats lived anywhere from fifteen thousand years ago to the seventeen hundreds. The cats that had that mitochondrial DNA indicating origin in Egypt. They were found as far north as Viking sites, especially one in northern Germany dating between the eighth and eleventh century. And let's pause here to bust a myth. The Vikings were not just picking on northern Europe. They made it to northern America, they made it to Greenland and Iceland. They had extensive or they were part of an extensive trade network going down to North Africa, going out to western Eurasia.
They got around.
It's not just some dudes on a boat having a bad day, doing psychoactive substances and behaving as though they were angry bears.
Shout out deserved zo angry bears. Wasn't that like a phone game? No, that's angry birds. I'm sorry. Angry bears is good, though we can't get sued. Surely they did flappy bird, you know, it's close enough.
The Vikings did wear cat pelts, probably when the cat died. They didn't have the same reverence as the rulers of ancient Egypt. However, we do know that cats were an important part of Norse mythology, especially because of Freya, the goddess of love. They were super into carriages for their like Nordic countries were super into carriages. So Freya had two cats that pulled her carriage and powerful cats. Man right, and there's another myth we wanted to shout out in particular.
Oh, just that, I think it's interesting. In thor in you know, Norse mythology, visited Outgard. He attempted to lift Loki's cats outguard Loki's cat, and it actually turned out to be the mid guard serpent or the world serpent you might remember from the God of War game. I believe it's the third one God of War Valhalla, if I'm not mistaken that I still haven't finished, but there's this crazy serpent that encircles the world, and I believe that's the mid Guard Serpent. Also, Freya is an important character in that game as well, And I want to say at some point in the God of War games you do meet some kind of giant cat, but maybe I'm misremembering that. But it's a very cool game and certainly takes some liberties with the mythology, but has some interesting, you know, kind of bits in there that you might find interesting if you're into this kind of stuff.
And out Guard Loki, to be clear, is not the same as Loki Loki. Out Guard Loki is. I guess it would translate to like the trickster of the Outlands. He's a Jotna, I believe they call it, which is somewhat kind of similar to a nepheline.
Different show. But then there's Jodenheim as well, which is the Land of the Giants game as well, which I think is also accurate mythology.
Yeah, yeah, and so if we're asking what these cats look like. You might be listening to this episode with doing your what's the bad guy the inspector gadget?
Doctor Claw?
Doctor Stan nailed it, thank you. Doctor Claw always has a cat on his arm rest. If you are in an.
It all comes from Blowfelds and James Bonds, and you know doctor Evil has the cat and stroking the cat. It's it's a classic villain thing.
If you're stroking the cat like one of our favorite villains right now, you may be wondering, Hey, did these Viking cats look like my little chonker? Uh? Not really?
Yeah, I mentioned earlier that I love the idea of of them having a horned helmet and sporting a little cat beard or at the very least a braid. But not only did they not deck them out in that way, they would not have exactly resembled what we know as the domestic fewline today.
Yeah, they would have been smaller, which makes a little bit of sense. If you go to if you go to Sarah Pruit from History, or if you go to our pal Emily Underwood, you will find that domestic cats in Denmark especially have increased significantly in size since the Viking Age. Most animals tend to become smaller when they are domesticated. That's why dogs are almost always smaller than wolves.
Interesting, but in the case of the cats, sort of the opposite thing occurred, right, It's interesting. I don't quite understand.
Why they've grown about sixteen percent bigger on average since what we call the Viking Era.
Yeah, Emily Underwood in that study we mentioned before, had this to say about it. By two hundred CE, the people of Iron Age, Denmark, were keeping cats charred human bones in a cremation grave. From that period, researchers discovered a cat ankle bone with a drill hole, suggesting it was worn as an amulet.
Yeah, the Viking the quote continues, the Vikings, who were farmers as well as seafairy marauders. They raised cats for their warm fur and to control pests. So by about eight fifty to ten fifty CE, cat pelts started bringing a high price in Denmark. There was also the study doesn't get super into this, but there was also still that old Egyptian influence, the idea, the idea that a cat could be good luck.
One percent pro It continues. As time went on, cats spread to rural settlements and estates as well as towns, and as the new study shows, they began to grow in size, fascinating. While it's not yet clear why exactly this growth occurred, so okay, no one knows, it was a good question. It may have something to do with increase access to food, okay, and better living conditions, especially after more and more people began treating cats as beloved house pets rather than strictly rodent hunters or sources of fur. Ben I would pose the question though, but that's the same. That's also true of dogs. And yet dogs got smaller.
Dogs got smaller, but dogs also, Oh, let's do an episode on domestication.
Oh, absolutely, going on the list.
All right, well, I'm putting it on the list now. And while we're while we're talking about this, we have to say again, it does appear that vikings had an intense relationship with cats, and vikings, you know, got around, and when they got around, they had to bring their cats living or dead. We know that, we know that increased consistent access to food over time does lead to in some cases, it does lead to a larger body size. We know, for instance, if you look at the Korean peninsula. In the case of the humans, access to food during formative growth periods and adolescents makes a big difference in your size and your height.
When this isn't to say that these were just chunkier cats, and this is an evolutionary right, bigger frame in general. Right, And you know, we certainly have little cats today. But then we also have like the kind of cats that I think are in your stable, the mancoons, the really big chunky boys that are absolutely gorgeous, but like kind of dog like in their frames and in their behaviors. Got oh interesting, So they're a little more loyal are they're a little less cat purely cat like man?
You know, everybody is their own I guess if I can.
Jump in real quick one funny. So Sylvia is incredibly cat then at the same time non cridly cat. One of the weird like dog like traits she does is she like waits at the door for me, so like when I get home, she's at the door. If I go out for a walk, Like we have these glass doors on our back porch, and if I go on a walk, I usually go out there and come back and she'll be sitting right there. Waiting for you. She's an indoor only cat.
She's just waiting for you to die so she can eat your eyeballs. Actually, the dogs are faster to do that, is that right? I love my cats, but they also scare me a little bit. I'm not gonna lie.
It's also unpleasant that I know that fact. But guys, just don't die around your pets. Parties find at parties, thank you, nol. We also know, we also know that cats have a kind of body size awareness that differs from the body size awareness of humans.
This is a term that I'd never run across before. This is a whole kind of school of thinking. This is this idea of body size awareness, and that's exactly right, like how it can inform the way a creature moves.
Yeah, the cats are famous for being able to maneuver their bodies through apertures that would land on their feet. Yeah, for landing on their feet. Again to the point about parkour, right, cats a very good at parkour. And cats also are more flexible when it comes to getting into an aperture. And also you know that's how they can get into the mousehole. You know what I mean?
I mean, dude, even my fattiest of catties can do some serious leaping and with precision, you know. And it's no accident that this idea of cats having nine lives is such a thing, because they really do land on their feet and they can jump from heights and not be injured.
It's a lot of fur also, and I appreciate you shout out, oh the cat with a thousand names, and then also doctor Vankman, because they're chonky boys. They've got a lot of fur and they've got a lot of muscle behind it.
But I and a lot of heart.
Sure, But we also know, we also know there's a great deal of cat folklore which might be an interesting second part to this episode. We can't wait to hear everybody else's or we can't wait to see everybody else's cat photos. Fellow Ridiculous historians hit us up on our Facebook page, Ridiculous Historians. Also, big big thanks to our cats, Big big thanks to our super producer and research associate for today's episode, mister Max Williams.
Absolutely big big thanks to the love cats of the Cure Fame.
You know, I love that song, Big big thanks to the cool cat Alex Williams, who composed this.
Track Ah Yes one of the coolest, as well as to Christopherciotis names Jeff Coates here in Spirit, Jonathan Strickland and A. J. Bahamas Jacobs, the Quistor and Puzzler respectively.
Yes, Yes, Big, big thanks to Rachel Big Spinach Lance Big, Big thanks to Sylvia Kromi, Vanessa, Doctor Venkman and of course the Cat with a thousand Names.
One thousand tales. We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
