For context, I'm fostering my first cat and he meows for me whenever he wants wet food or sometimes while playing. Curious, I was looking up why cats meow and adult cats don't meow with each other, only at humans. This is fascinating since it means they've evolved to adopt (no pun intended) this behaviour. Cats have interacted with humans for thousands of years, if not more, so this phenomenon has me curious.
Do we have the first (written or otherwise) record of a "meow" at humans? Has there ever been a time when cats haven't meowed at humans and then they evolved to do so? When did we figure out they only do it to humans and not other cats?
Maybe this is the wrong subreddit for this question, but it has often provided fabulous answers to curious questions.
I can't answer the specifics to if this is evolved behavior (I've read all kinds of explanations including that they treat us like a mother cat in some ways and thus meow like a kitten) but the ancient Egyptian word for cat is indeed that very onomatopoeia as noted by u/Bentresh here:
Ancient Egypt wasn't quite the first civilization to write but they were close, so it's probably safe to say cats have meowed at humans for all of written history.