December
13, 1995
Dear
Mr Plant:
I
obtained your address from Mrs Dupré of AVICULTRA magazine.
Your
article, Thoughts on the origin of domestic fowl, compares to my findings. In
my judgement too many scientists got
carried away with Darwin’s speculation on the origin of both the domestic
chicken and the domestic pigeon.
For
more than 55 years I have been searching into this matter and have had a dozen
or more articles published on the subject. An example is enclosed.
I
have visited your country, but the last time was about 20 years ago.
Sincerely,
American
Poultry Association - Year Book 1990
THE
ENIGMA OF THE CHICKENS ORIGIN
By
Jerome J.Pratt
The
origin of the domestic chicken (Gallus
domesticus) aroused my curiosity since I first started to study the
Standard of perfection as a teenager. Dr J.P.Schneeberger's experiments with
fertile chicken-pheasant hybrids stimulated me to write an article on
Hybridization which appeared in the 1939 American pheasant Society yearbook.
My next article on the subject Was It The Junglefowl appeared ten years later, April 1949, in
Modern Game Breeding Magazine. Simultaneously, I had another article Origin
of Fowl Challenged appear in The
American Poultryman. I did not then or do I now accept the claim that all
domestic chickens are the progeny of a single source, the red junglefowl (Gallus
gallus ). It
Is on example of where If Scholars repeat a theory often enough it will
eventually be accepted as fact.
In
the same issue of The American
Poultryman mentioned above, Harry Atkins wrote: “We feel certain that
many of our fowl are not directly from the junglefowl. but have a mixture of
pheasant blood in the lines. I have photographs and data of a domestic line of
fowl in which there were distinct infusions of pheasant blood starting with an
old black hen. In several generations we were able to develop a silver
pencilled pattern with a crest.”
The
photographs mentioned by Mr Atkins were taken by Arthur O.Schilling in 1941.
The negatives are in my files with Mr Schilling's handwritten note stating:
“These are negatives of cross bred birds that Dr Schneeberger has. They are
direct crosses on chickens and pheasants which he made to prove our domestic
breeds have pheasant blood in them. I handled all these birds and found them
all to appear to be cross-breeds.”
Now
we have archaeologists supporting the single source of origin theory. In the
November 1989, World's Poultry Science
Journal, a paper by Barbara West and Ben-Xiong Zhou appears under the
title “Did chickens go north? New evidence for domestication.” Ms West is
with the British Museum in London, and Ben Xiong Zhou also known as Chow
Ben-Shun is with the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.
A
summary of the West-Zhou thesis Is as follows:
"Using
archaeological evidence for chicken domestication from China, Asia and Europe,
as well as palaeoclimatic evidence from China, it is concluded that chickens
were domesticated from the red junglefowl Gallus
gallus in Southeast Asia well before the sixth millennium BC and taken
north to become established in China by c. 6000 BC, whence they were later
introduced to Japan via Korea during the Yayoi Period (c. 300 BC - 300 AD).
Domestication occurred in India much later (c. 2000 BC?), either independently
or. as a diffusion from Southeast Asia. Although the Iron Age was the main
period for dispersion of chickens throughout Europe, they were already present
in some areas during the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age. It is proposed
that the earliest European material may be derived from China via Russia.
Because the key is likely to lie in central areas of the USSR. the findings of
positive or negative evidence for the theory will depend on the interest d
archaeologists working in the Soviet Union. Their collaboration is invited."
I
wrote to Mrs West pointing out that the conclusion chickens were first
domesticated in Southeastern Asia from the red junglefowl, Gallus
gallus, infers, but probably not intentional, that the Gallus gallus is the sole progenitor of Gallus domesticus which I cannot accept. I stated, "There is
enough circumstantial evidence manifested in morphology, physiology, and
ethology to support there is a missing link in tracing the ancestry of the
domestic chicken."
An
abrupt reply from Ms West let me know her support for Gallus
gallus as the sole progenitor was indeed intentional. In other words Ms
West is satisfied that all of the world’s fossilised bones have been
discovered. I guess she isn't aware that palaeontologists are discovering new
fossilized material constantly.
In
the radical differences in various breeds of chickens occurred only through
mutation and selection. why, hasn't the archaeologists been able to locate
bones which show the progression of change? There is an amazing difference in
the tarsometatarsi of the German Creeper and the Langshan in divergence from
the jungle fowl. We can speculate the Creeper may be a Gallus
gallus mutation which was developed through selection. But it would be a
lot more difficult to trace the ancestor of the Langshan.
After
writing the articles mentioned in the first paragraph I attended the
Government's Strategic Intelligence School in Washington, DC. Here I learned
that much of what can be applied to making economic and resource deductions
can be applied to natural history as well. Information gathered from
encyclopaedic analysis based on anatomical analogy can tell us as much if not
more than a few fossilized bone fragments as it relates to the evolutionary
process. With such reinforcement l am prone to give weight to circumstantial
evidence as well as theory.
I
can accept that some games, Mediterranean and similar breeds have evolved from
the Gallus gallus. According to Wright, Temminck described a junglefowl
called Gallus giganteus from Malay as an extinct race which seems to be a more
reasonable ancestor of the Asiatic and large Oriental breeds. This I believe
is the missing link. I have no doubt about the pure ancestry of the black
Sumatra which originated from a specific source. Notes of Henry van Oordt on
file in Rijks-museum van Natuurlijke in Leiden, The Netherlands, indicate that
a bushfowl, Gallus sumatrensis, is
extinct in the wild, but has been perpetuated as a domestic variety.
Our
current understanding of evolutionary relationships has been largely derived
from studies of comparative morphology. but new techniques are appearing. We
may someday be able to trace the ancestry of the various breeds of domestic
chickens to their wild source if we focus on DNA molecules. The DNA
(deoxyribonucleic acid) molecules encode the genetic information of an
organism. But then if the Gallus giganteus and other species became extinct
and no fossilized material is ever discovered there will still be a piece of
the puzzle missing.
Except
for the Sumatra, at present all we can say is that Gallus domesticus is a
descendant of an unknown source. The scientists will continue to advance
theories and some will offer them as fact. But those of us engaged in poultry
husbandry are not always going to agree with scientific theories.
REFERENCES:
American
Poultry Association, 1985, American Standard of Perfection, revised.
Banning-Vogelpoel,
A.C. 1979, Personal communication, Waardenburg, Netherlands.
Darwin,
Charles, 1868, The Variations of Animals and Plants Under
Domestication, 2 vol., John Murray, London.
Hargrave,
Lyndon L 1972, Comparative Ostelogy of the Chicken and
American Grouse, Prescott College Press, Prescott, AZ.
Lucas,
Alfred M. and Peter R.Stettenheim, 1972, Avian Anatomy Integument, 2 vol.,
Michigan State University, U.S. Govy, Printing Office, Washington.
Pratt,
Jerome J. 1940, Hybridization, Modern Game Breeding Magazine 10(4) Doylestown,
PA.
Pratt,
Jerome J. 1949, Origin of Fowl, American Poultryman (April), Sulpulpa, QK.
Schmidt,
Karl P. 1973, Taxonomy, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chicago - London.
Smith,
Page and Charles Daniel, 1975, The Chicken Book, Little Brown & Co.,
Boston - Toronto.
West,
Barbara and Ben Xiong Zhou, 1989, Did chickens go North? New evidence for
domestication. World's Poultry Science Journal 45(3), WPSA, London.
Wright,
L. c. 1900, Book of Poultry, Cassell, Petter & Galpin, London.