How Chickens Shifted From Sacred To Diet Staple

For the final three years, researchers in the UK have been finding out the lowly rooster, they usually say there's far more to the ever-present hen than many individuals understand.

KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:

This month at Oxford, archaeologists, anthropologists, artwork historians and different researchers will get collectively to speak about chickens. To clarify why, we talked to Naomi Sykes. She's a senior lecturer on the College of Nottingham and an knowledgeable in zooarchaeology. Which means she research how individuals and animals have interacted all through human historical past. And for the final three years, her consideration has been squarely targeted on one animal specifically: the rooster.

Along with a group of roughly 25 researchers within the U.Okay., she's working to reply questions on the place chickens got here from and the way they developed with individuals. The mission has a really critical title.

NAOMI SYKES: Cultural and Scientific Perceptions of Human-Rooster Interactions. However we simply name it The Rooster Venture (laughter).

MCEVERS: Listed below are a few issues that stunned us of their analysis. First, Sykes says chickens are literally solely native to Southeast Asia. They began transferring round the remainder of the world about 5,000 years in the past. After which there's this.

SYKES: Once we take into consideration chickens right now, we simply take into consideration them as meals, proper? They're the most important supply of protein on the planet, whether or not that is their meat or whether or not that is their eggs. However I feel the true shocker for us has been there's little or no proof to counsel that individuals initially began hanging out with chickens for these causes. It seems as if chickens had been by no means thought-about to be meals in any respect once they began on this strategy of hanging out with individuals.

MCEVERS: When she says hanging out, she means hanging out. When chickens had been launched to new locations, Sykes says individuals thought-about these unusual new animals sacred. In some instances, individuals had been even buried with their chickens. So how did they go from beloved companions to lunch? Sykes says it is as a result of there ultimately had been simply so lots of them.

SYKES: As familiarity breeds contempt nearly, because the numbers elevated, individuals began considering, oh, these chickens - they don't seem to be so particular in any case. Let's, like, knock just a few on the pinnacle and eat them. Oh, they're fairly tasty.

MCEVERS: Tasty and now sort of humorous. Three years into the mission, Sykes says she's heard all of the jokes.

SYKES: In truth once we first acquired the funding for this mission, we made worldwide information with individuals simply saying, what a ridiculous mission; what a bird-brained concept. We're inflicting a flap with taxpayers' cash.

MCEVERS: Sykes says, you recognize what? Chickens are humorous, so that you would possibly as effectively embrace it.

(SOUNDBITE OF THE MIGHTY IMPERIALS SONG, "THUNDER CHICKEN")

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