Most people know that cats have been basking in the glow of worship since ancient Egypt, but new research suggests the worship even earlier in human history. The findings, which were published in the Dec. 16 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, points to the domestication of cats back to at least 5,300 years ago.

“We all love cats, but they’re not a herd animal,” says study co-author Fiona Marshall. “They’re a solitary species, and so they’re really rare in archeological sites, which means we just don’t know much about their history with people.”

The authors of the study explain that although cats are among the world’s most popular pets, evidence regarding when they were first domesticated was limited to Egyptian sites. These sites date back 4,000 years and show the felines living in the Egyptians’ homes.

Marshall and her team were able to, through new scientific methods, find that cats became domesticated for essentially the same reasons as dogs: mutual benefit. Dogs became domesticated around 9,000-10,000 years ago under hunter-gatherers; however, while cats appeared to have partnered with the farmer, Marshall said.

“Cats had a problem [obtaining] food, and so were attracted to our millet grain. And farmers had a problem with rodents, and found it useful to have cats eat them,” said Marshall, who is also a professor of archeology at Washington University of St. Louis.

The research team was able to support their study’s conclusion through eight cat bones. Belonging to at least two cats, these bones were found near a small farming village in the Shaanxi province of China. The team carbon dated the bones and learned that the cats were from 5,300 years ago, three millennia earlier than the next oldest cat remains found in China.

While finding the bones near the village was promising, the research team did another study to further support the domestication theory. The researchers used sophisticated isotope analyses on rodent, cat and human bones to determine the three’s similarity in eating habits. All three ate high a lot of millet-based—grain—foods. One cat in particular consumed more millet-based food than meat.

These pieces of evidence suggest that the cats were eating animals that lived on grains, which came from a farming life. That meant the cats were either scavenging or being fed by the farmers.

The next step for research will be an in-depth DNA analysis to determine the species of the Shaanxi cats.