Where did chickens originate?
Thanks to Richard and Mark for this one. I don’t know why nobody spotted it before because it is an all important question. We have been asking where chickens have and have not been introduced to but where did the first chickens exist as chickens. I shall have to look into this when I have time but if anyone can send me decent links then feel free. I have found this link stating that the domestic chicken originated on the Asian continent with the Red Mountain Fowl Gallus gallus. Nick Walton has some different views however: “Now, of course, one has to rewind the clock sufficiently, and I’ve traced back as far as Archaeopterix , and the raptors, and I believe that Chickens evolved around 104,323 years ago from a line resembling the Dodo. An initial archaeological search of the suggested evolution area’ has revealed that not only did the chicken DEFINITELY come before the egg (which evolved around 64 days after the chicken), but that the chicken first came into being without human introd
All our domestic animals, of course, are descended from ancestors that once lived in the wilds. But some of our animals have been tame for so long that experts have trouble tracing back their family trees. Records show that the Chinese were raising chickens some 24 centuries ago. We suspect that the wild ancestors of our chickens were rusty red jungle fowl of India and other parts of Asia.
