Feb 16, 1995

Dear Bill

Ed Hoffmann sent me the Japanese paper. It does not make sense to me. But I freely admit that I am an ignoramus in DNA and for that matter in most statistical matters.

But it does seem that they contradict themselves in their final sentence in their abstract: "hens of other RFLP types also contributed to this event."

Ed tells me that you have written on the chickens of Polynesia. Can you spare a copy?

I find that Pigafetta says of the Philippines. The chicken is called mona, and in the neighboring islands moa. For Malaysia he gives Ayam for chicken. So the names have not varied a syllable in 500 years. And there is not a trace of moa in America.

In South America, Atahualpa turns out to be a compound name. Ata is chicken in Ecuador and there are many variants. Hualpa is chicken without variation throughout the Inca Empire. This suggests relative frequency for the chicken in the Inca area, antiquity for the chicken in the Ecuador area. The connotations are: creation, authority, etc. hence appropriate for the Inca. Even today chickens and eggs are given to honor someone in the Andean area.

Our book on the chicken in America is stopped pending C14 dating of bones. American archaeologists are adamant: NO chicken bones in America before the Spanish! We have a prospect of an eagle bone, a macaw bone and a chicken bone, all from the same Pueblo ruin - Salado phase - well pre 1540. I will be negotiating an AMS C14 dating of these.

I went through the Handbook of the South American Indians: 3 volumes. Chickens mentioned a number of times, noted as NOT EATEN, difficult to maintain because the vampire bats attack them- and No One ever thought to ask: So why did they keep them? And of course, not a mention of what the chickens looked like. I find that blue egg laying chickens were and in part still are all over South America and clear on up into Honduras. Similarly for the melanotic chicken.

All the best.

The Chicken Group

Thanks to Ed Hoffmann I have the DNA report on the unity of the chickens. Evolution-Chickens, Akishinonomiya, et all Proc Natl Acad Sci. USA 91 12505ff 1994 Now if I just really understood it!

I am a bit startled to see Plymouth Rocks, Rhode Island Reds Cochin, Jersey Black Giants and Araucana listed as Western!! Except for the Araucana all of these went “West” in the 19^th century. And how in the world could anyone put the Araucana in the Western Group?? Indian Game is another. Old English Game-Western. The other surely Malay Leghorns and Minorcas are representative of the earlier Western chickens, I think because the illustrations from Egyptian through Greek etc show a small chicken with showy tail and single comb. etc. Cochin bushy tailed, peacombed. Malay drooping tailed and strawberry comb, or use some term that suits Hoffmann for the Malay comb.

Argument number One. Hoffmann thinks that all breeding ended with the Romans and there was nothing but Dunghill fowl. Reply. The Dung Hill fowl probably were the basis for the later European breeds prior to the introduction of the Asiatic fowl during the Hen Craze. And the Romans are credited with introducing the five toed English meaty fowl, and it is still there. There was such breeding for the Medieval Abbeys have records of hens obviously selected for egg laying and it looks as if the English also bred for a meat fowl.

Asiatic. More difficulties. Only the ancient breeds in Japan have jidori in their names. The bantams are said to be 16^th or 17^th century introductions from Malaya. They also consider the Malays as post European contact birds. Black Silkies. Surely good Asiatic. C.F. Marco Polo and others. Any bird labelled Ayam is probably from Ayam Malaysia White Leghorn as an Asiatic representative seems to me to verge on nonsense. Houdan Asiatic?? I wonder on what basis? So

I get a sense of No Historic background.

Then I recall that at Bang Chang, Cambodia the first domes tic chicken was a Malay type. Then the Jungle Fowl type appeared. Then hybrids. And then the Malays disappear. This in a letter from Barbara West. I must write to see if this is in print by now.

Then I have struggled to understand the cabalistic data (all statistics are mysterious to me). I find White Leghorn and Nagoya diverging sharply from the others, and varying together while the Hiroshima Leghorn does not vary with the Other White Leghorn. WHY? Is the Nagoya-Malay-Japanese group (Gifu-jidori Thai Bantam and the Ayam Katai) relation to the Mediterranean White Leghorn real ? If so??

Obviously I have a differing kind of view of this whole thing. Chickens were in America long before 1500 AD. The Japanese chickens are very different from the Chinese chickens, today. The Japanese did not get Chinese chickens until the end of the 19th century, and then got them from England!!! The Bantams and Malay types they state arrived after contact with the Europeans in the late 1600’s? ( I am not stopping to look it up).

So. Copies to go the rounds. I am adding Lee Cartwright here -TAMU, Poultry Science. I am trying to interest him in DNA on archaeological chicken bones from America. He is our DNA poultry man.

George F. CARTER, T&M Geography, College Station, Texas 77843

I would suppose (hypothesize-guess) white Leghorn-Nagoya reflects an original relationship deriving from an early spread of small chickens went to the Mediterranean an North to Japan, something related to the Jungle Fowl.

If Hiroshima white Leghorn does not vary with the other white Leghorn, I would think that any reasonable scholar would start asking question.

After thoughts

I have read over what I have said and penned on a thought or two, and then thought maybe I can state my thoughts a bit more - hmmm - not stridently - but critically.

If one takes as Western ,obviously Asiatic birds (Cochin, Langshan etc) and compares them with Asiatic birds then one is of course NOT going to find differences.

If the White Leghorns in Japan are different from the White Leghorns in Europe, but the White Leghorns of Europe are like the Nagoya (and what is a Nagoya?) then WHAT is being measured?

I looked at figure 4. White Leghorn and Nagoya vary together remarkably, and differ from the rest equally remarkably. 157, 225, 243, 256, 261, 310. Of the 24 elements for six, these two are very different. As I stated early on, I don’t understand.

And I have difficulty with Green Jungle Fowl?? Is this the Javanese critter that lacks paired wattles, has a gut half the length of the other fowl, has a bare throat and a bare stripe down its breast, is extremely leggy, short winged, and has overhanging brows, a drooping tail, etc.? Commonly called a Malay??

But is this not the bird that the locals cross breed with their other chickens in order to get more color?? (Japanese papers) ((Don’t the Japanese scholars speak to one another??))

And is this not the exceedingly long legged bird so visible in the Philippines, and late to arrive in Japan?? And despite friend Hoffmann every reference that I find to this bird is accompanied by fighter and when I show pix of chickens to Asiatic students here (with no prompting) they immediately point to the Malay and say that is the fighting chicken.

I really should go to some cock fights for I don’t understand one statement: “Once they grab hold they never let go”. So how do they fight? I have read: Mediterraneans fight in the air. Malays fight on the ground. Med have upturned spurs. Malays have straight spurs.

I obviously am enamoured of externals, and do not understand what is going on here.