The chicken is one of the most common domesticated animals, with a current estimated population of over 33 billion individuals. They are reared for their meat and eggs, and may be kept as pets.
The chicken is believed to have been domesticated in Southeast Asia about 3,500 years ago, following which they were carried to all corners of the world. The exact date of introduction of chicken breeding to Japan is under debate, as there are no historical records and archaeological evidence is inconclusive.
Professor Masaki Eda at the Hokkaido University Museum led a team to uncover the earliest conclusive evidence of chicken breeding in Japan. The findings, which show chickens were bred in the Karako-Kagi site, a settlement from the Yayoi period [5th century BCE to around 2nd century BCE], were published in the journal Frontiers in Earth Sciences.
"Chickens and their wild relatives belong to a family of birds called Phasianids, which includes pheasants, turkeys and quail," explains Eda. "Bones of juvenile phasianids recovered from archaeological sites could not indisputably be identified as belonging to chickens or to similarly sized wild pheasants. Identification of juveniles is important, as it would indicate that breeding of chickens took place."
The Karako-Kagi site, in what is now Tawaramoto Town, Nara Prefecture, is considered to be a settlement that played the role of a leader of the Kinki region during the Yayoi period. There are multiple archaeological digs in the area; one such dig, at the 58th research point, yielded ten phasianid bones, four of which belonged to juvenile birds.
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