How the wild jungle fowl became the chicken

Chicken and rice is a winning combination. The two are closely related. Chickens may have never existed without rice according to two new studies.

The work shows that chickens may have been domesticated thousands of years earlier than scientists thought, and only after humans began cultivating rice within range of the wild red jungle fowl, in Thailand or nearby in peninsular Southeast Asia. Many of the hoary myths about chicken origins have been destroyed by the studies.

Chickens descended from the red jungle fowl because they looked so much alike. It has been hard to prove him right. Small chicken bones are rare in fossil sites and there are five different types of jungle fowl.

Chickens share more of their genes with the subspecies of jungle fowl than other types of jungle fowl, according to a study done in 2020. Domestication to Southeast Asia was narrowed by that. The fossils of early chickens were found in northern China and Pakistan. The window for domestication is not limited by genetics according to the first author of the genetic study. They haven't been able to get enough ancient DNA from chickens to know when. A bioarchaeologist from the University of Oxford and a paleo-anatomist from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich collaborated on a project. The duo organized an international team that began a comprehensive reevaluation of chicken bones, their dates, and records on them, from more than 600 archeological sites around the world. Chicken bones were directly dated in a study.

The oldest bones of likely chickens came from a site called Ban Non Wat in central Thailand, where farmers grew rice 3 250 to 3 650 years ago. The skeletons of young members of the Gallus family were buried as grave goods by the farmers. The researchers think that the rice seeds drew the jungle fowl to the rice fields, where the birds nested in thickets at the edge of the fields.

As the scientists traced the trail of chicken bones across Asia into the Middle East and Africa, they discovered a correlation between the spread of dry rice farming, millet, and other grains. The team found that chickens existed in the Middle East and Northeast Africa as far back as 2200 years ago. The team argues that the studies were flawed because the fossils were not chickens or the dates were incorrect.

The team re-dated the bones of 23 proposed earliest chickens in Europe and Asia to find out when chickens first entered Europe. The first chickens in Europe were found in an Etruscan site in Italy, according to a report.

Historical records include the Bible. According to the study, chickens aren't featured in the Old Testament. They appeared in the New Testament.

It took another 1000 years before chickens arrived in Britain. Julia Best was involved in both studies and said that the birds had to adapt to the cold climates.

Humans started to think of the birds as food a few years ago. Initially, people traded them as exotic possessions, valued for their feathers, coloring, and loud crow, based on how they were depicted in art. She notes that early chickens were small and not a big source of meat. About 500 years after chickens are introduced to each new place, they lose their special status and become ordinary food.

According to Masaki Eda, a zooarcheologist at Hokkaido University, the dispersal of domestic chickens is a more recent event.

Eda wants to know if the bones in Thailand are from chickens or junglefowl. He wants researchers to survey other sites in Southwest Asia to find out where and how chickens were domesticated.

Chickens have become the most successful domesticated species on the planet despite being domesticated later. They outnumber us 10 to 1 today. It isn't just about chickens or rice. How humans relate to chickens is a great way to understand how humans relate to nature.