How did the chicken get from the forest to our backyards?

From a wild bird to a domestic chicken, their history is still controversial in the scientific community and many biases in old studies have contributed to the misunderstanding of their domestication and dispersal around the world. A new study, much more robust than the previous ones, provides new details on this subject.

The chickens are the most numerous and common pets. They are found all over the world but their origins and the circumstances in which they were domesticated by humans, as well as their transport across the Globe are still under debate.

Two key studies regarding their domestication are always cited and very rarely disputed. The first study defends an origin of the domestic chicken in Southeast Asia, and the second study an origin in northern China before following to Europe. However, the validity of these hypotheses is hampered by several biases such as the scarcity of archaeological remains, problems with bone recovery and dating. In addition, chicken bones are subject to scavenger activity and stratigraphic shifting which contribute to the loss of evidence. Errors can therefore be generated, as demonstrated by a recent program radiocarbon dating, invalidating the claim that the first appearance of the chicken was in Europe.

Results of a new study

An international research team recently established a robust spatial and temporal framework for chicken origins and dispersal – the results have been published on Pnas. To make a more rigorous study than the previous ones, the researchers worked on the archaeological occurrence of chickens and their domestic status at around 600 sites located in 89 countries. They combined zoogeographic, osteometric and contextual data to confirm or question the domestic status of birds, as well as morphological, stratigraphic, iconographic and textual data. Their results ended up suggesting that chickens were not domesticated in the Indian subcontinent but in central Thailand where the first bones of domesticated chickens are found (in Ban Non Wat, exactly), dated to he about 3,250 to 3,650 years ago. It would seem that they then arrived in central China, South Asia or Mesopotamia around 3,000 years ago, and finally in Ethiopia and Mediterranean Europe 2,800 years ago.

Regarding the circumstances of their first domestication, studies show a close link between the spread of rice cultivation and millet, and the first appearances of chickens. Agricultural practices, notably the production and storage of cereals, could therefore have served asmagnet and initiate the process of domestication of chickens : cereal seeds would have attracted wild birds from the jungle to the rice fields to feed, and they would have gradually become accustomed to Men to end up integrated into human communities and allow their dispersion on the Globe.

In conclusion, therefore, the studies support that the dispersal of domestic chickens has occurred more recently than expected. Moreover, they were not considered food immediately, but rather exotic goods as they were valued for their feathers, colors and are found a lot in art.