The origins and dispersal of the chicken (Gallus gallus) across the ancient world is one of the most enigmatic questions regarding Eurasian domesticated animals. The lack of agreement concerning timing and centers of origin is due to issues with morphological identifications, a lack of direct dating, and poor preservation of thin, brittle bird bones. In new research, archaeologists examined ancient chicken eggshells from 13 different archaeological sites, spanning a period of a millennium and a half. Their results show that chickens were widely raised across southern Central Asia from the 4th century BCE through Medieval periods, likely dispersing along the ancient Silk Road.
“Debate over the origins and spread of domesticated chickens has intensified in recent years with the introduction of genetic and molecular methods, reigniting old controversies over the enigmatic bird,” said Dr. Carli Peters, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, and colleagues.
“Historical sources attest to the prominence of chickens in southern Europe and southwest Asia by the last centuries BCE.”
“Likewise, art historical depictions of chickens and anthropomorphic rooster-human chimeras are reoccurring motifs in Central Asian prehistoric and historic traditions. However, when this ritually and economically significant bird spread along the trans-Eurasian exchange routes has remained a mystery.”
“Specialists agree that domestication traits evolved in an insular population of South Asian jungle fowl, likely the red jungle fowl (Gallus gallus ssp. spadiceus) somewhere across its expansive range from Thailand to India.”
“However, scholars have also presented widely diverging dates and routes of spread, and some of this confusion comes from unclear identifications of birds in ancient art and overlap in morphological features of chicken bones with those of certain wild avian species.”
“In addition, brittle hollow bones and eggshells are far…
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