How did chickens conquer the world?

It is said that in 490 BC, on the edge of a certain greek road, people saw the chicken that saved Western civilization. At that time, the Persian army attacked, and the Athenian general Dimistock raised troops to meet the enemy. On the way, he saw two roosters fighting on the side of the road, so he beckoned his army to stop and said to them, "Look, these two guys are fighting hard, not for the gods of the family, the monuments of the ancestors, the glory of the individual, the freedom of the person, or the protection of their children, but because the other side does not give way to them." "That's the end of the story. It does not say what happened to the losers, nor why the soldiers saw this instinctive aggressive impulse and did not feel bored or bored and depressed, but their morale soared. But the Greeks were encouraged by this, however, and they fought bravely to kill the enemy and drive out the invaders. Western civilization has been saved, and the two chickens that have fought each other can be said to be indispensable, but how do people today repay the savior? Could it be that the two chickens that had boosted morale were wrapped in breadcrumbs, thrown into a frying pan, and then poured with sauces of various flavors? The descendants of those two roosters may wonder—if they really have such profound intellectual capacity—to see what our ancestors did that would have left us with eight lifetimes of mold.

Chicken is the ubiquitous food of our time and is popular in different cultural settings. Chicken has a mild taste and delicate meat, and almost any cooking method can make a fuss about it. The adult generation of Britons believed that Indian chicken curry was a traditional dish in the country, and the same happened in China – KFC fried chicken. In the past, American families mostly had a few chickens in the yard, and they were always caught and turned into a hearty dinner. As time passes, most Americans will have nostalgia when they eat chicken, recalling the beautiful rural life of the past. When the writer Jack Canfield tried to find an appropriate metaphor for psychological solace, he thought of Chicken Soup for the Soul, not "Clam Soup for the Soul."

People can't help but ask, what virtue can chickens have, and they have actually ascended to the main position of culture and cooking? What is even more surprising is that many archaeologists actually believe that the original purpose of domesticating chickens was not to eat meat but to fight cocks. Before the development of large-scale industrial farming in the 20th century, the economic and nutritional contribution of chickens was not obvious. In Guns, Germs and Steel, Judd Dimon classifies chickens as "small mammals and poultry and insects," saying that while useful to humans, they play little role in changing the trajectory of history than horses or cows, except in myths and legends. Nevertheless, thousands of years have passed, and chickens have continued to enlighten and make many contributions in culture, art, cuisine, science and religion. In some cultures, the chicken was, and is, a sacred animal. The majestic and vigilant hen is widely regarded as a symbol of nurturing and fertility. Eggs are hung in Egyptian temples to ensure that the river is plentiful. The vigorous rooster (also known as the rooster) represents masculinity – even in the ancient Persian Zoroastrian belief, it was believed that the rooster announced that the good elves foreshadowed that the battle between darkness and light in the universe had a turning point in which victory was in sight. For the Romans, the chicken had the foreknowledge of fate, especially in wartime. When the Roman army went out, it always had to take a flock of chickens with it, and carefully observe the movement of the chickens when they were about to fight; a good appetite meant that the odds were greater. According to Cicero, in 249 BC, a great battle at sea was about to begin, when a flock of chickens refused to eat. One of the archons was furious and threw them all into the sea. The history books record that he was finally defeated.

But such a major religious tradition — ironically, although Jewish chicken soup and Sunday chicken dinner are inextricably linked to religious traditions — do not give the chicken enough attention to give it its rightful place in religious practice. Judging from the old Testament's reference to sacrifices, Jehovah clearly favored beef and mutton. In Leviticus chapter 5 verse 7, jehovah says that if a sinful person "is not strong enough to sacrifice a lamb, he will bring two doves or two young pigeons to the Lord for his sins as a sacrifice of redemption." In Matthew 23 verse 37, Jesus told the Jerusalemites that he cared for them as if a hen had gathered her chicks under its wings. People were negligent and did not pay enough attention to this picture, otherwise the history of Christian imagery would not have been occupied by images of various shepherds as it is today. In the Gospels of the New Testament, the role of the chicken, though modest, is a key part in fulfilling Jesus' prophecies, because before his crucifixion he said to his disciple Peter that tonight "before the rooster crows" you will deny me three times. (In the 9th century, to commemorate this event, Pope Nicholas I issued an edict that all churches should have a rooster on top of them, and to this day people will see a small rooster-like weather vane on the church spire.) In fact, the chicken did not do anything except to tell the time, but it is likely that inadvertently, people have related its time-telling behavior to the betrayal of Jesus, thus delaying the great future of the chicken in Western culture. In contemporary American language, "chicken" is always associated with cowardice, nervous anxiety ("unfounded") and ineffective panic ("scurrying like a headless chicken").

In fact, the males of this species are fierce animals, especially those bred and trained according to the battle chickens. Big roosters are born with bone spacing on their legs; humans are not addicted to it, and they tie iron and knife to their legs. In the United States, cockfighting is illegal, and Americans think the sport is too cruel. The last state to ban cockfighting was Louisiana, which enacted a ban in 2008. But in other parts of the world, people still practice the sport legally or illegally, claiming that cockfighting has existed since ancient times and should be regarded as the oldest entertainment on the planet. In ancient times, there were many works of art based on the theme of rooster warriors, such as in the 1st century AD, the houses in Pompeii were decorated with mosaics, and the pattern was a scene of cockfighting. The ancient Greek city of Pergamon also built a cockfighting arena, using chickens as a demonstration to cultivate the brave and tenacious spirit of a new generation of warriors.

The genealogy of the domesticated chicken is as complex as the genealogy of the British Tudor royal family, dating back to 7,000 to 10,000 years ago. Not only that, according to the latest research, it has at least two wild ancestors and may have been domesticated more than once. In northeastern China, the oldest suspected chicken fossil has been found to date, dating around 5400 BC. But birds' ancestors never lived on cold, dry plains, so if they do belong to chicken bone fossils, they must have come from somewhere else, most likely Southeast Asia. The ancestor of the chicken is the red original chicken. Charles Darwin first proposed this theory, and this hypothesis was recently confirmed by DNA testing analysis. The resemblance of the red original chicken to the modern domestic chicken is expressed in the rooster's red hanging meat and crown, the distance used for fighting, and the whining call when mating. Dark brown hens are no different from domestic chickens in hatching eggs and clucking. In their habitat, from northeastern India to the Philippines, red native chickens roam the forest, looking for insects, seeds and fruits on the ground, and flying to the nest in the trees at night to rest. Its full ability to fly is nothing more than that, and this characteristic of not flying far is really hard to ask for for for humans who want to catch and raise them. This feature also made the chickens friends with Africans later, but their local guinea fowl had an offensive problem, often getting nervous and flying into the forest.

But the red chicken is not the only ancestor of modern chickens. Scientists have identified 3 species that may be hybridized with red original chickens. However, it is uncertain how much genetic material other birds contribute to domesticated chickens. The latest findings suggest that modern chickens inherit at least one trait, their yellow skin, derived from the grey native chickens of southern India. Did the domesticated red chicken really start in Southeast Asia and march north into China or southwest into India? Or did there exist two separate domestication centers: ancient India and Southeast Asia? Both scenarios are possible, but incoherent genetic chains hinder efforts to further trace the chicken's origins. "Because domestic chickens and pheasants have had intricate intercourse over a long evolutionary history, it has made it difficult to trace gene chains," said Michael Zoudi, a computational biologist at the MIT-Harvard Broad Institute.

In 2004, the chicken ushered in its most glorious moment. An international team of geneticists has mapped the entire chicken genome. From this, the illustrious lineage of the chicken can be determined: the world's first domesticated animal, the first bird animal, that is to say, a direct descendant of dinosaurs. This genome map provides us with an excellent opportunity to study how thousands of years of domestication can alter a species. In a research project led by Uppsala University in Sweden, Zou Di and colleagues have been studying the differences between red original chickens and their domestic chicken descendants, which include specially bred "layer chickens" and "broilers." The researchers found that a gene, numbered TBC1D1, has an important mutation that regulates sugar metabolism. In the human genome, mutations in this gene are associated with obesity, and since chickens are destined to be on the table, how much meat can grow is the last word. They also found that selective reproduction caused mutations in the TSHR gene. This gene coordinates the one-day reproductive activity of wild animals, limiting reproduction to specific seasons. However, genetic mutations impair this function, so chickens can breed all year round – laying eggs more than once.

In the thousands of years since pheasants became domestic chickens, human cultural exchanges, trade, migration and logging have also contributed to the continuous introduction and re-introduction of chickens between different parts of the world. While uncertain, there is evidence that the Indus Valley may have been the starting point for the westward migration of birds, where trade between some city-states and the Middle East flourished during the Harappan civilization 4,000 years ago. Archaeologists have unearthed chicken bones in Rotal, once an important port on the western coast of ancient India, and one can't help but think of the possibility that chickens have traveled far and wide to visit the Arabian Peninsula, whether as a living thing to be sold or as a delicacy for seafarers. By 2000 BC, mesopotamian cuneiform script had the words "Bird of Meluha," perhaps referring to somewhere in the Indus Valley. But it doesn't necessarily mean chickens; Professor Peter Steinkeller, an expert on ancient Near Eastern scripts at Harvard University, says it's certain that it refers to "an unknown exotic bird in Mesopotamia." He believed that the "Bird of the Royal Meluha", which appeared in the text 300 years later, was probably referring to chickens.

About 250 years later, as exotic fighting chickens and caged birds, chickens came to Egypt. Royal tombs began to appear with ornaments featuring chickens. After another 1,000 years, chickens entered the homes of ordinary people and became a commodity bought and sold by the Egyptians. At that time, the Egyptians mastered the technique of artificial hatching, and from then on the hens could be freed from the nest to do something more meaningful: lay more eggs. Speaking of which, that's a big deal. Most eggs take 3 weeks to hatch the chicks, but whether they can successfully break out of the shell depends on whether the temperature of the eggs can be maintained between 99 and 105 degrees Fahrenheit, and the relative humidity must be around 55%, and gradually increases in the days near the hatching. Turn the eggs over 3 to 5 times a day, otherwise the hatching chicks may lack wings and legs.

The Egyptians built large hatchery facilities made up of hundreds of "ovens." The oven, or incubator, is large and interconnected with extensive corridors and flues, in which the hatcher can regulate the temperature in the incubator, which is fueled by hay and camel manure. For hundreds of years, egg hatchers never revealed to the outside world how they hatched their eggs.

On the Mediterranean coast, archaeology has unearthed some chicken bones dating back to 800 BC. The Romans loved chicken and invented ways to enjoy delicious eating, such as omelets and filling chicken stomachs with spices, but their recipes focused more on mashed chicken brains than breadcrumbs. Farmers figured out ways to fatten chickens: some fed them bread soaked in wine; some mixed cumin, barley and lizard fat together as feed. Authorities once banned this feeding method. In 161 B.C., in order to prevent the Roman Republic from degenerating and pursuing extravagance, the authorities issued a decree requiring people to eat only one chicken per meal, presumably at each table, not every diner — and unnowed chickens. The practical Roman cooks soon discovered that castrated roosters loved long meat, and castrated chickens were born.

But after the collapse of Rome, the chickens seemed to be in much less position in Europe. "Worse," says Kevin McDonald, a professor of archaeology at University College London, "in the post-Roman period, chickens regressed in size to the Iron Age," the level of more than 1,000 years ago. He reasoned that the large, organized chicken farms of the Roman period provided a safe and fertile environment for the flock to grow, but they all disappeared later. Hundreds of years later, more skinny birds such as geese and partridges began to appear on the medieval dinner table.

When Europeans came to North America, they found that it was full of turkeys and wild ducks, which could be grabbed and eaten casually. Some archaeologists believe that the chicken came to the New World about 100 years before Columbus, and that it made landfall along the Pacific coast of South America with the Polynesians. For a long time in the 20th century, although chickens were highly valued, especially the eggs they laid, chickens were not remarkable in the diet and economic life of Americans. After cattle and pigs have long since entered the era of industrial production marked by cluster mechanized slaughterhouses, the chicken industry is still in the stage of free range and small-scale local breeding. Feed formulations mixed with antibiotics and vitamins made it possible to raise chickens indoors, which led to a major breakthrough in the chicken industry, with large-scale chicken farms of up to 500,000 chickens. Like most animals, chickens need to be exposed to the sun in order to synthesize vitamin D in their bodies, so until the first 10 years of the 20th century, they usually wandered around outdoors and foraged around. Now they live indoors that shelter them from the wind and rain and don't have to worry about predators, eating prepared feed, and the surrounding environment has been deliberately modified to allow them to concentrate on eating without any interference. Factory farming marks the final step in the chicken's journey to the protein-rich food family. The hens are kept in cramped wire cages, each less than half a square foot, unable to flap their wings or stretch their loins; in windowless chicken houses, there are usually as many as 20,000 to 30,000 broilers huddled together.

As a result, supply-side economics has done a nationwide experiment on people's appetites: factory chicken farms produce large quantities of chickens, which greatly stimulates consumption. By the early 1990s, chicken had overtaken beef to become the most popular meat in the United States (by consumption, not polls), consuming 9 billion chickens a year, or 80 pounds per person per year, stripped of the bread crumbs that were wrapped in that layer. Modern chickens have a heavy responsibility when it comes to efficiently converting grains into protein. For every 1 pound a live chicken gained, it needed two pounds of feed, less than half the 1945 feed-to-weight ratio. In contrast, 1 pound of beef and 3 pounds of pork cost about 7 pounds and 3 pounds of feed, respectively. Gary Balducci, a third-generation chicken farmer living in Edgecombe, Maine, spent 6 weeks raising freshly hatched chicks into 5-pound broilers, half the time his grandfather took. As a result of selective breeding, these broilers are unusually docile, and even if they are allowed to go outdoors so that they can be sold as free-range chickens for a good price in the future, they are not willing to go far, and they like to wander around the mechanized trough, waiting to eat ready-made. "Chickens are good wanderers," Balducci said, "but our chickens don't do that." They now only know how to eat. ”

Watching this group of chickens clucking, whining, and waiting for their turn to get off the pot makes it hard to believe that they are actually the same as the chickens of ancient times, their predecessors were worshipped by people in many parts of the world for their bravery and good fighting, and the Romans believed that they could get the message of fate from them. No matter how magical the species once had, there was no trace of chickens bred to satisfy the appetites of the American population. Western aid workers in Mali understand this most deeply. They tried to introduce the American-origin Los Angeles red chicken to replace the skinny native chicken, but failed. It turns out that there is a local tradition that when villagers divinate, they will cut the throat of a hen and then look at which side the dying chicken is falling. Falling to the left or right is an auspicious omen, and if you fall straight forward, it is a bad omen. However, the lodo red chicken chest is too developed, after being wiped neck, the body is overwhelmed, always straight forward, so that each divination has no meaning except to herald a good meal.

Formed in Cuba, Santeria absorbed elements of religion such as Roman Catholicism, native Caribbean culture and the religion of the Yoruba people of West Africa. The sacrifices in the festival include chickens, guinea pigs, goats, sheep, turtles and other animals. In 1993, in a First Amendment lawsuit, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that local ordinances prohibiting animal sacrifice were overturned. The plaintiff in this case is a Sateria church and its priest Ernest Pichado, and the defendant is the municipality of Hialeah, Florida. Numerous mainstream religious and civil rights organizations sided with the plaintiffs, while animal rights advocates backed the defendants. "Although it is difficult for some people to accept animal sacrifices," Judge Anthony Kennedy said in his judgment, "but under the rights granted to people by the First Amendment, religious beliefs do not need to be accepted, understood, or aligned with others." ”

Chickens are very fun pets. Chicken farmers will say this to you, especially if they want to persuade you to buy chicks. They are as colorful as tropical fish, but closer to people; not only are they cute like guinea pigs, but they also taste better. Jennifer Howie, a chicken farmer in the town of Rhinebeck in New York, puts it in her words, "Chickens can do better than cats when it comes to catching mice." ”

What characteristics of chicken farmers value most? There are 5 breeds of layer chickens farmed by Barbara Gardner Whitaker in upstate New York, which she believes mainly depends on the color of the eggs. The Eggs laid by the Wilsum chicken native to the Netherlands were brown, the Lame Rocana chicken from Chile laid a light green egg, and a Wilsum rooster did not keep its duty, allowing the Lamero Rocana hen to inadvertently produce a new breed: the spotted olive green egg. In addition to color, it should also be hard and beautiful, and the hatching rate is high. Last but not least, these chickens hatch more chicks in addition to laying eggs and make their own contribution to the breeding industry through hard work. Of course, the eggs they hold in their nests don't necessarily lay themselves. If necessary, Whitaker will have one chicken incubate the eggs of other hens, even duck eggs. Unfortunately, these characteristics sometimes conflict with each other. Her farm also houses silk-feathered black-boned chickens, which are outstanding in appearance and have gorgeous fluffy feathers. However, the chicken's skin is blue, and the flesh is a dark blue that is almost dark, which does not make it the first choice for the company's dinner. Two years ago, Whitak killed two black-boned chickens to taste them. "Of course, it's delicious and the meat is tender, but how is it this color?" She recalled. "And looking at those bones always feels weird." So if I eat black-boned chicken now, I usually have to make this dish with other colors, such as stewed chicken in red wine, or stewed with tomatoes and thyme. "But some Asians don't have that bias, and they have a lot of admiration for the black chicken, thinking that it is not only delicious but also medicinal." To Whitaker's incredulous, a frozen black chicken weighing just 1.5 pounds could sell for more than $10 in a local Asian market.

Open the Green Fire Farm website and you'll find that some chickens from a foreign land or from an extraordinary background can sell for sky-high prices — the maximum price of a chick hatching for a day is $399. The chickens raised at Greenfire Farm are not only beautiful in stature, but also have good names: the eggs under the Cream Legbar are sky blue; the Sulmatler has gorgeous tail feathers and brightly draped flesh; the Jubilee Orpingtons are brown and white, speckled like snow-capped hillsides under the warm spring sun; and the Silver-necked chicken in Sussex Sussex) is like the work of the abstract painter Jackson Pollock splashed out in his black and white period. Many breeds of noble blood have an advantage (of course, it is an advantage that only chickens have), and their egg-laying career is as long as 7 years, unlike those commercial breeds of chickens, who have participated in egg laying work for more than 3 years. The years are merciless, even if the breed is noble, one day they will not be used, at this time, the owner of the house will grab the chicken, place it in the back seat of the car, drive directly to the Whitaker chicken farm to hand it to her, and then sobbing that he really does not want to be so desperate and abandon them.

As he walked away, Whitaker would sometimes say to himself, "I'm going to deal with 8 chickens today, sir." How did you do it? ”

Now, let's celebrate the vibrant chicken and show its unparalleled glory. The chicken, it is the mascot of globalization, and it is a symbol of the competition of all sentient beings to show their culinary skills! Chicken, which managed to break into the Caesar salad, nibbled into turkey's territory in sandwiches, lurked under a ball of pasta-flavored pesto sauce and transformed into Japanese teriyaki chicken, radiating an alluring appetite. The chicken, which is first soaked in sour cheese and spices, then grilled on top of a bunch of seeds, and finally bathed in curry-flavored gravy, becomes what former British Foreign Minister Robin Cook called "an authentic British national dish." In 2001, Cook used the example of chicken curry to demonstrate Britain's determination to pursue a multicultural policy, a speech that became known as the "Chicken Curry Speech." The signature dish in a British restaurant, he said, "is a perfect example of how well the UK is able to embrace foreign cultures." Grilled chicken nuggets with sour cheese are an Indian dish, and curry sauce is touted to suit the British habit of dipping meat in broth. According to a Scottish MP, this great dish was born in an Indian restaurant in Glasgow in the early 1970s, and he also asked the European Union to certify the dish as a "protected of origin" product. But Chefs in New Delhi have a different view. One of the chefs claimed that the chicken was "a true Indian flavor, first formulated by our ancestors, the Mughal imperial chefs," around the 16th and 18th centuries.

If there is an American version of the curry chicken story, it is probably Zuo Zongtang chicken. The New York Times called it "the most famous Hunan dish in the world." To Hunan chefs, the tone is too loud, because they have never heard of the dish before China's opening up policy in recent decades. It is widely believed that the chef who created the dish was Peng Changgui, who was born in Hunan and went to Taiwan in 1949. This is done by frying the chicken nuggets and then stir-frying them in the matching hot sauce. He named the dish after the general who led the Suppression of the Taiping Rebellion in the 19th century, a conflict that killed 20 million people and was almost forgotten. In 1973, Peng came to New York, opened a restaurant, and began to cook his specialty dishes, which later became a favorite of diplomats. Over the years, Zuo Zongtang chicken adapted to American tastes and became sweeter. Today, through "reverse cultural migration", Hunan chefs and food writers have regarded Zuo Zongtang chicken as a "traditional" dish in Hunan.

But foreign observers have noticed that more and more Chinese, at least city dwellers, think of KFC when they think of chickens. Since the first chicken leg was laid in Beijing in 1987, KFC has opened more than 3,000 stores in China, and it now makes more money in China than in the United States. There are many factors that make it successful, from the clean bathroom to Colonel Sanders's (Grandpa KFC)'s kind appearance like Confucius, and so on. But it's clear that this success doesn't mean Chinese started loving the flavors of mid-American cuisine. "Bone-in fried chicken is served there," noted Mary Sherman, a native of Kentucky who heads the Agribusiness program at Harvard Business School. "And it's always fried chicken thighs and the like, Chinese loves to eat." It's just one of the 30 or so varieties and it's not the most popular. "One of the reasons KFC is doing well is that it caters to the tastes of Chinese customers, introducing their familiar noodles, rice and dumplings, as well as chicken rolls, chicken pie and chicken wings. Sherman said they were so popular that from time to time the KFC restaurant debunked rumors, denying that it had a farm dedicated to six winged chickens.

If this chicken really exists, there will be such a scene: chicken fans will be able to buy home to expand the ranks of pet chickens, the menu of high-end restaurants will add tricks, and food bloggers will compete around whether the first pair, the second pair or the third pair of chicken wings taste the most delicious. Chickens around the globe tell us an epic success story about evolution, farming and cooking, and they are far more numerous on Earth than humans, achieving a near-three-to-one advantage. Yes, we're going to eat chickens, but we're going to feed them too. Not only do they serve us omelets, casserole stewed chicken, diced chicken stew in oil, wheat chicken and chicken liver sauce, they also provide us with the answer to a question – every 6-year-old asks their parents on their first visit to the Museum of Nature: "What does dinosaur meat taste like?" ”

The taste of chicken.