Chicken of the Sea
These days, it's easy to fly across oceans for vacation. Centuries ago, however, crossbreeding the open seas required planning, handmade boats, and bravery.
Scientists and historians own long been looking clues to explain WHO crossed which oceans first. When it comes to the trip between Polynesia and Southeastward America, chickens may have been among the first ocean voyagers, accordant to new evidence.
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| This chicken may be a descendant of birds that Malayo-Polynesian explorers brought to South America. |
| iStockphoto |
After studying an past chicken bone, anthropologists from the University of Auckland in New Zealand now say that hoi polloi (and chickens) traveled from Polynesia to what is now Chilli by about 620 years ago. The Inca citizenry were already living in Due south US by then, but the Polynesians would hold been the first of all to get there by sea. Previous theories claimed that European explorers and their chickens sailed to South America first—but those voyagers didn't arrive until about a century later.
In 2002, archaeologists dug finished 50 chicken bones from a site in Chile known as El Arenal. The squad from Recent Zealand analyzed one of these clappers. According to their calculations, the bone is about 650 years old.
The researchers also compared the genetic material Deoxyribonucleic acid from the South American chicken bone with DNA from 11 white-livered bones that had been found on the Polynesian islands of Kingdom of Tonga and Solid ground Samoa. These islands are 6,000 miles Cicily Isabel Fairfield of Chile. The bones base on the Polynesian islands are between 2,000 and 600 years old.
Results of the comparisons showed that the chickenhearted bones from both the Archipelago and South American sites had one stretch of DNA in common. The researchers found the synoptic stretch of DNA in feathers of two extant chickens in Chile that lie in to a modern cover that lays blue egg. That DNA evidence suggests a close relationship among the chickens.
"The weight of scientific evidence is today squarely behind the hypothesis that it was seagoing Polynesians who sailed from the islands to South America and returned," says archaeologist Patrick V. Kirch of the University of California, Berkeley.
In 1989, Kirch found evidence that preserved sweet potatoes came from Southland America to Polynesia up to 1,000 old age agone. The new finding further supports the theory that Polynesians were gliding to South America long before Europeans were.
Strange experts disagree with the new historical theory. According to archeologist Betty Meggers of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Evergreen State, D.C., both a black-deboned breed of chickens in Exchange America and the blue-egg variety in South US came from Asia. Scientists still debate whether the Inca had chickens at each.
Future ferment is necessary to support the eld of the chicken bones from Elevated Arenal. Only then will we know more about those first brave chicken explorers of the suboceanic.—Emily Sohn
Going Deeper:
Bower, Bruce. 2007. Chicken of the seagoing: Poultry may have reached Americas via Polynesia. Scientific discipline News program 171(June 9):356. Available at http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20070609/fob4.asp .
McDonagh, Sorcha. 2003. The puzzle of ancient mariners. Science News program for Kids (Oct. 22). Visible at http://World Wide Web.sciencenewsforkids.org/articles/20031022/Note3.asp .
Sohn, Emily. 2006. Gallus gallus talk. Science Tidings for Kids (Nov. 29). Available at HTTP://web.sciencenewsforkids.org/articles/20061129/Note3.Egyptian cobra .
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