Earlier than chickens grew to become meals for individuals, they have been thought to be particular exotica

There are extra chickens than another species of hen on the planet. With three chickens for each human being, they’re a meals staple for tens of millions of individuals around the globe. However new analysis exhibits chickens have been domesticated solely comparatively lately and have been as soon as revered.

The query of the place chickens come from and the way people have interacted with them over time has eluded us for many years, till now. For many individuals it’s tough to consider chickens as something aside from meals. However two new research are altering our understanding of human-chicken relationships.

Considered one of our new research radiocarbon dated bones from 23 of the earliest proposed chickens in Europe and northwest Africa, to check their age. By confirming which chickens are literally historical we get a clearer perception into once they arrived in these areas and the way individuals interacted with them. Only five specimens corresponded with the dates that archaeologists had beforehand assigned to them. The opposite 18 have been rather more current than beforehand thought, generally by hundreds of years.

Earlier hypotheses, which based mostly their dates on contextual clues corresponding to the place these bones had been positioned and what different artefacts they have been discovered with, instructed that chickens have been current in Europe as much as 7,000 years in the past. However our outcomes present they weren’t launched till round 800 BC (2,800 years in the past). This reveals that chickens are a relatively current arrival to Europe, in comparison with home cattle, pigs and sheep which reached Britain round 6,000 years in the past. The brand new courting additionally means that in lots of places there was a time-lag of a number of hundred years from when chickens have been first launched to an space, to them actually being considered meals.

Most of the early chickens recognized by our radiocarbon courting are full or nearly full skeletons. In Britain not one of the most historical skeletons present proof they have been butchered for human consumption. They have been typically older animals, buried alone in pits. One specimen even had a well-healed leg fracture, indicating human care. She was additionally nonetheless capable of lay eggs: she had a substance known as medullary bone inside her skeleton which is shaped throughout egg manufacturing.

These clues counsel that relatively than being thought of a supply of meals, these early arrivals to northern Europe have been extra possible thought to be particular exotica, particularly given their small inhabitants dimension on the time.

In some places shortly after chickens have been launched, we discover them buried with people. A brand new survey of British Late Iron Age and Roman burials that contained chickens signifies these burial rites have been typically gendered: males have been buried with cockerels and females with hens. Chickens might have been included in human graves as “psychopomps”, whose position it was to guide human souls to the afterlife. Such a job would have been in line with their affiliation with Mercury (the Roman god of communication and journey). Giant portions of cockerels have been sacrificed to Mercury at temples corresponding to Uley, Gloucestershire. In different instances, the chickens in graves have been a meals providing. It is a follow that grew to become extra frequent in Britain by means of the Roman interval.

It’s clear that human-chicken relationships have been complicated and about extra than simply meals for fairly a while, even after they began to enterprise onto the dinner desk.

So the place did these particular birds first come from?

From the jungle to the fields

Current DNA analyses confirmed chickens have been domesticated from a subspecies of pink jungle fowl known as Gallus gallus spadiceus which lived in south or south-east Asia. This might suggest chickens have been domesticated inside this broad area.

Prior to now, there have been three essential hypotheses on location and timing. The primary locations domestication round 4,000 years in the past within the Indus Valley. The second argues it occurred in south-east Asia nicely over 8,000 years in the past. The third sees their origins in northern China 10,000 years in the past.

However these theories fail to take into consideration essential components. These embrace: courting uncertainties, skeletal similarities between chickens and different native wild species, and the broader cultural and environmental context.

Within the second new examine our crew reassessed the identification of the species, the home standing and the courting of essentially the most historical reported rooster bones from greater than 600 archaeological websites throughout 89 international locations, in 4 continents. We discovered all three hypotheses are fallacious. The oldest bones now confidently assigned to home chickens come from the Neolithic website of Ban Non Wat in central Thailand, and date to round 3,500 years in the past – a lot later than beforehand thought.

Whereas uncertainty stays about why chickens have been domesticated, one factor seems to have drawn chickens and other people collectively: rice. The introduction of dry rice farming in central Thailand coincides with the date of the oldest rooster stays. This implies the brand new kind of farming might have been a catalyst for the domestication course of.

The clearing of the jungle for cereal cultivation would have created a cushty surroundings for the pink jungle fowl. Concurrently, the newly grown rice, together with millet, would have drawn the wild jungle fowl into shut contact with people, sparking the domestication course of, after which their rooster descendants have been dispersed internationally with human societies.