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  The ancestor of the old angora is probably the Desertcat (Felis margarita, see left) and the easier to domesticate North African Yellow Cat (Felis silvestris lybica, see right).
The Desertcat has a dense coat in-between foot cushions and has lots of hair around his neck and shoulder (like a male lion). The old angora's and the modern species still have the long ears and face from both wild cats (Turkish Angora, Ankara Cat).
In the literature and art of ancient times long haired cats are not seen; long haired cats from the Middle-East were the first in Europe.
Travelers took this cats home as a souvenir. In Italy they were imported round 1550; at the end of the 16th century they came to France, but they were rare long time after that.
Cats with long hair that came outside mated with short haired cats and because short hair is a dominant gene, kittens with short hair were born (chance on long hair was about 25%). In general one thinks that the first long haired cats came from Turkey. In the middle of the 19th century, when people got interested in certain cats and began breeding these cats, the cobby type was popular. This type was known as the Persian Longhair; probably it came from what is now called Iran (and then called Persia).
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Ancestor of the ancient longhairs must have been the Gobi cat (Felis bieti) from the Northwest Chinese border territory (see pic). This cat has, unlike the Forestcat (Felis silvestris), hair in-between the foot cushions, just like our modern Persians, and is one of the most impressive wild cats that exist. An adult male can reach a length of 1.4 meters and a weight of 16 kilos.
