Chicken genome may show where they were domesticated

[feliciadawn]

Thought some of you might find this of interest.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/202...road-southeast-asia-landmark-gene-study-finds

 

[Perris]

thanks @feliciadawn - it was interesting.
It's obvious from surviving literary sources that domesticated chickens were common in ancient Greece, from Homer's time at least, which was about 2,700 years ago. Somewhere in the Odyssey (can't remember where) they are mentioned roosting in the rafters of people's houses.

 

[feliciadawn]

Somewhere in the Odyssey (can't remember where) they are mentioned roosting in the rafters of people's houses.

Oh my, that would be a stinky house! I love my chicks but would never want to sleep below their roosting site.

I looked up the original birds that were domesticated into chickens. Gallus gallus spadiceus. Very beautiful birds.

 

[Perris]

Oh my, that would be a stinky house! I love my chicks but would never want to sleep below their roosting site.

me neither!

 

[Shadrach]

Somewhere in the Odyssey (can't remember where) they are mentioned roosting in the rafters of people's houses.

That would have been my place.....

 

[Japetus]

thanks @feliciadawn - it was interesting.
It's obvious from surviving literary sources that domesticated chickens were common in ancient Greece, from Homer's time at least, which was about 2,700 years ago. Somewhere in the Odyssey (can't remember where) they are mentioned roosting in the rafters of people's houses.

I highly doubt that there's any reference to chickens in the Odyssey. Chickens came to Greece through Persia around the15th century bc,and were raised mainly for cockfights. Only around the 7th century bc we do get written evidence of actually raising them for food.

 

[feliciadawn]

I highly doubt that there's any reference to chickens in the Odyssey. Chickens came to Greece through Persia around the15th century bc,and were raised mainly for cockfights. Only around the 7th century bc we do get written evidence of actually raising them for food.

How about the story of Plato and the chicken?

"According to Diogenes Laërtius’ third-century Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers, Plato was applauded for his definition of man as a featherless biped, so Diogenes the Cynic “plucked the feathers from a cock, brought it to Plato’s school, and said, ‘Here is Plato’s man.’ "

 

[Japetus]

Plato lived in the 4th c. Bc - while the writer diogenes laertius lived in 1st c. Ad.
To correct my previous post, in the 15th century bc the chickens traveled to ancient Egypt, it was the 7th c. Bc that they came to ancient Greece through Persia and only a century later they started using them for meat/eggs.

 

[feliciadawn]

I'd love to read a book on the history of chickens.

 

[Perris]

I highly doubt that there's any reference to chickens in the Odyssey

you may, but it's there. As you note in your correction, chickens are present in Greece from the Cent.7 bc - and Homer is the source for almost anything thus dated (Hesiod is the alternative).
Besides Plato, which @feliciadawn flagged up, his student Aristotle has a detailed description of the development of the chicken foetus and describes an experiment to do at home to see it for yourself over the course of the 3 weeks - that's in the History of Animals, if memory serves.