Cats were also domesticated in China 5,000 years ago, apart from Egypt

Investigating which species the cat remains found in agricultural settlements in China dated to 3500 BC belong to, scientists are trying to understand whether small cats were domesticated in this region separately from the Middle East 5,000 years ago, or whether domestic cats were brought to China at this date.

All of the bones found in these farming villages in China belonged to the leopard. The leopard is a distant relative of the wildcat, the ancestor of all modern domestic cats.

Thus, the researchers found evidence that cats began to be domesticated in China before 3000 BC. This event in China can be compared to the relationship that developed between humans and cats after the birth of agriculture in the Middle East and Egypt.

 Cats are the most common type of pet in the world, with over 500 million individuals. All domestic cats today come from the African and Middle Eastern Wildcat (Felis silvestris lybica). According to a study published in 2004, the close relationship between humans and cats first began to form between 9000 and 7000 BC, after the beginning of agriculture in the Middle East.

In 2001, researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences discovered cat bones in Neolithic sites dating to 3500 BC in northern China's Shaanxi province. It was not known whether these cat bones belonged to cats brought to China or to cats domesticated in China in the 4th millennium BC. Although the remains of at least four small cat species have been found in China, no remains of the wildcat (Felis silvestris lybica), the ancestor of modern cats, have ever been found.
To solve this problem, researchers from the French Center for Scientific Research, the French Museum of Natural History, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Shaanxi Institute of Archeology and the University of Aberdeen came together.

In the absence of DNA samples, the researchers applied geometric morphometric analysis, the only way to distinguish the bones of small cats. The morphological differences between the bones of small cats are often too small to be noticed by conventional techniques.
The study examined the jawbones of five cats dating to 3500-2900 BC found in Shaanxi and Henan. The examination revealed that all the bones belonged to Prionailurus bengalensis, known as the leopard cat and still widely inhabited in East Asia. This wild cat breed is a distant relative of the Wildcat and is known for frequent visits to areas with high human presence.

Likely in this case, as in the Middle East and Egypt, the leopard cats gravitated to Neolithic settlements there because of the abundance of rodents that haunted the grain stores.