Mihos Wrote:
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> I disagree that Prairie Chicken bones are
> Identical with Junglefowl. I am an anatomist and
> there is a great deal of difference between the
> two.They are hardly related to one another.

What type of anatomist? Do you specialize in avian skeletal biology?

Irregardless, note that I DIDN'T say "identical", I said "indistinguishable."

I did research on pre-Columbian chicken claims a year or two ago, and found archaeological reports specifically stating that Prairie Chicken bones were indistinguishable from certain chicken breeds (junglefowl, & certain Asian breeds closely related to them like fighting cocks).

> Faunal bones in Egyptian digs are very difficult
> to classify when it comes to avian specimens. One
> reason is that avian bones are hollow, more so in
> some species than others,leading many cultures to
> eat the entire bone, especially those of
> terrestrial species. Rodents and insects are also
> capable of consuming both distal ends of cokked
> galliform bird bones but not those of ratites or
> anseriformes due to different physiological
> factors mostly dealing with density and porosity
> of bone.
>
> We have been attempting to determine if bones
> found in Karnak are those of guineafowl or
> domestic fowl or even coturnix quail or Alectoris
> partridge for twenty some years.

Sigh... and here YOU YOURSELF note the extreme difficulty in identifying avian bones found at archaeological sites.

> If one studies their archeology closely, there are
> very few if any attempts to classify bones that
> belong to fowl any older than a few centuries old
> in tropical countries even in countries where it
> is obvious they have been eaten in the region
> since time begins.

And then you say "few if any attempts" re classifying of fowl bones older than a few centuries.... 'fess up, you don't know of any archaeological reports of pre-Columbian chicken bones in the Americas, do you?

> Magellan clearly described chickens and chicken
> eggs in his writings. He was the first European to
> describe the blue egg laying South American
> chickens.

Would you happen to have clear cites on this? Extensive googling located no even halfway credible looking references...... and none with cites.

And while I DID find references to his picking up supplies, listing said supplies by type in each case, this was ONLY on the Atlantic coast (he doesn't seem to have actually landed on the Pacific coast, let alone have interacted with Indians enough to obtain supplies from them)..... and chickens were NOT among the supplies mentioned as being obtained.

Interestingly, a British Auraucana chicken society website mentioned blue egg laying chickens being described in SPAIN in 1526 (by a historian named Cabot, perhaps Bernard will be able to shed light on this reference?). Given the circumstances of the few survivors who managed to make it home, Magellan's expedition was obviously NOT the source for these.

Hmmm, I recall hearing that various eastern European chicken breeds (Hungarian/Transylvanian/Carpathian region in particular) were of the Asiatic type, and that some of them layed colored eggs (& that many of the Auraucana chicken's distinctive traits are found among them). Perhaps this 1526 account referred to chickens originating in that part of Europe.

> No offense to Kenuche Lover but some of
> that pshawwing is a bit over the top. The genetics
> of the domestic fowl in question is clear.

The "genetics of the domestic fowl in question" are NOT in question. It's the TIME PERIOD that they reached South America that is being debated.

As Katherine (& I believe Bernard) have mentioned, there is NO archaeological evidence of pre-Columbian Gallus Gallus in the Americas.... and the historical accounts I've seen have all been concerted in their claim that chickens were NOT known here.

All I've seen claiming otherwise were vague stories, distorted accounts of archaeological "unidentified", and the like.

That is one reason I question your Magellan claim.... if he really DID report actual chickens (rather than some blue egg laying South American wild bird, many of which exist), I think the historians would have noticed.....! And if they'd existed in Brazil (where one of the "wild claim" websites claimed he'd picked them up from the Guarani Indians) or along the Atlantic coast where he was known to have provisioned, as well as along the Chilean coast, then they'd have been widespread & common enough to have made an impact in the historical & archaeological record. But they didn't, so......

> The
> splitting of the RFLP types took place somewhere
> between fifty and twenty~ thousand years ago.
> Yamashina et al published a number of fascinating
> manuscripts largely in Japanese on the domestic
> fowl of Oceania and the Pacific which other
> authors have followed.

Why haven't you cited any of them? (Go ahead, I've two Japanese sisters-in-law, and a geneticist friend of a friend with a Japanese wife who has GOOD contacts in Japan. I'm sure I'll be able to dig up access).

The only Japanese author you cited was Fumihito et al.... and I've got that paper already (He doesn't cite Yamashina, for whatever that signifies).

While interesting in it's own right, it makes NO mention of Polynesian or South American chicken breeds.... it's not a relevant cite.

> THe basis for using these
> different species of junglefowl and their hybrids
> on islands is based on their fecundity.

No, the hybrids often have REDUCED fertility, as you yourself note below. But they ARE valued for other traits (crowing, fighting spirit, broodiness, self sufficiency, etc).

> It takes a
> specific number of generations before female are
> capable of succesful reproduction and another
> number of generations in genetic isolation before
> certain mutations and phenotypey are dominant and
> breed true.

This makes little genetic sense..... and I say this based on one of my own degrees (I switched from molecular genetics to biochem/cell bio 3mo before graduating) as well as on the experiances reported online from numerous exotic chicken breeders.

> With or without physical evidence of
> the domestic fowl in coastal villages the fact is
> there are very unique forms of domestic fowl that
> only occur in regions that correspond with some of
> these human lymphocyte antigens.

NONSENSE! These fowl are found in areas WITHOUT significant levels of those HLAs, and those HLAs are found in areas WITHOUT these fowl!

> This is to say that like the human populations,
> the domestic fowl for whatever reason, also share
> narrowly defined genetic stock.

Nope, it's to say that essentially unrelated (defined as preponderance of common ancestry dating back within the last 30,000-50,000+ years) human stocks randomly share many different HLAs, and that domestic fowl have been WIDELY disseminated within the last few hundred years.... independent of the genes of their original human keepers.

Kenuchelover.