We might maybe possibly well possibly now know when chickens had been domesticated – however no longer why

Chickens had been domesticated later than we thought, however potentially no longer for their meat. As a alternative, they are able to enjoy acted as early terror systems or non secular guides to the afterlife

By Colin Barras

The earliest domestic chickens now we enjoy ever chanced on lived no sooner than 3670 years up to now, suggesting the world’s most typical domestic animal has a miles shorter history than previously thought. What is extra, these birds don’t appear to had been raised for their meat, making it unclear what drove the domestication process.

The chickens alive this day drop from a wild rooster native to South-East Asia called the pink junglefowl (Gallus gallus), however precisely when domestication came about used to be unclear. Some researchers enjoy estimated that the first domestic rooster lived better than 6000 years up to now, whereas others claim to enjoy chanced on rooster bones at 10,000-twelve months-traditional archaeological sites.

Ophélie Lebrasseur on the Centre for Anthropobiology and Genomics of Toulouse in France has co-authored a entire prognosis of the evidence. It concludes that domestic chickens invent their first particular look in the archaeological file indispensable later – between 1650 BC and 1250 BC at a advise called Ban Non Wat in central Thailand.

“It’s the earliest irrefutable evidence,” says Lebrasseur. No longer only are rooster bones superabundant at Ban Non Wat, there might maybe be also evidence that folks had been buried with the birds, which she says makes a domestic relationship particular.

One reason researchers had previously suggested domestication came about indispensable earlier is that rooster bones are with out bid at a loss for words with these of thoroughly different birds, equivalent to pheasants. One other reason is that burrowing animals can displace small rooster bones underground so that they discontinue up in older, deeper layers of grime, which will lead archaeologists to take the bones are historical.

In a 2d gape, Julia Most attention-grabbing at Cardiff University, UK, and her colleagues showed how this process can confuse archaeologists. They radiocarbon-dated 23 rooster bones from several archaeological sites throughout Europe and north-west Africa, and chanced on 18 of them had been youthful than previously thought.

One bone from a advise in Bulgaria had been estimated to be 7500 years traditional – however radiocarbon relationship suggested it belonged to a rooster that used to be alive between about 1959 and 1985. Most attention-grabbing says such results weren’t entirely unexpected. “We had begun to enjoy an inkling that just some of the earliest bones had been potentially no longer as historical as had been claimed,” she says.

Lebrasseur’s crew suspects rooster domestication might maybe possibly well want been attributable to the look of cereal farming in South-East Asia.