The Strange Origin of the Chicken

The Strange Origin of the Chicken Maybe we didn’t domesticate the chicken to eat it. Newer archaeology points to a forest bird drawn to rice and millet fields a commensal pathway — with Ban Non Wat (central Thailand, ~16501250 BC) as the earliest unambiguous remains in a major 2022 review. Early European chickens often look rare and symbolic before they look like dinner. A 2024 Central Asia eggshell study proposes (as a hypothesis) that birds were laying over much more of the year — flipping the economics from one-time meat to repeated eggs. Sources (verify in papers; hypothesis wording preserved): • Peters, J. et al. (2022). The biocultural origins and dispersal of domestic chickens. PNAS 119(24): e2121978119. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2121978119 Best, J. et al. (2022). Redefining the timing and circumstances of the chicken’s introduction to Europe and north-west Africa. Antiquity 96(388): 868–882. DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2021.90 Peters, C.; Richter, K.K.; Wilkin, S. et al. (2024). Archaeological and molecular evidence for ancient chickens in Central Asia. Nature Communications 15: 2697. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-46093-2 Wang, M.-S. et al. (2020). 863 genomes reveal the origin and domestication of chicken. Cell Research — genetic support for G. g. spadiceus as main ancestor (ancestry thread, not the dating review). Chapters (long): 00:00 Hook — everywhere animal 00:50 Red junglefowl 01:17 Old claims / fragile bones 02:09 Peters et al. 2022 PNAS 02:57 Ban Non Wat 03:35 Rice & millet / commensal 05:02 Spreading out 05:33 Best et al. 2022 Europe 06:26 Weston Down / burials 07:20 Rome / becoming food 07:41 Egg problem 08:05 Central Asia eggshells 2024 09:58 Genetics / methods 13:24 Montage & roles 18:30 Closing No AI images. Real photographs only — no text pages, labelled maps or captions on screen. Photos: Wikimedia Commons contributors (CC BY / CC BY-SA / public domain). Cultura quase intil — weird science, almost useless, almost. #chickens #domestication #archaeology #jungelfowl #history #science #eggs #silkroad #banNonWat #weirdscience