November 17, 1995.

Dear Mr Plant,

I am very happy to receive your kind letter of September 7. It is a real surprise and is generous of you to send me your valuable investigation on the domestic fowl origin. Some comments of mine will be given below.

First, I would like to mention that I have good and interesting contacts all over the world. I mean for example Mr Hans Schippers and Mrs Anna C.Banning-Vogelpoel from The Netherlands, Prof Willard Hollander and Mr Loyl Stromberg from the USA, Prof Roy Crawford and Prof Edmund Hoffmann from Canada, Mr Björn Hedman from Sweden, Dr Elio Corti from Italy, and many others.

In October I had a pleasant opportunity to meet your Italian friend Dr Elio Corti personally during his visit in Moscow. It should be told that this opportunity was rare and I appreciate his willingness and patience in realizing this chance. As for me, it was one of the deepest impressions in my life and, frankly speaking, Dr Corti is a unique man, one of few I have ever met. In the course of that Moscow sojourn we took part in the International Workshop on Studying Natural Populations at the N.K.Koltsov Institute of Developmental Biology, visited Dr Irina Moiseyeva at the N.I.Vavilov Institute of General Genetics, Russian Academy of Sciences, met Dr Alexandr Blistanov, Republican Category Expert in Cynology, Trophies of the Chase and Fowl, visited the Museum of Darwinism, Tretyakov Art Gallery, Moscow Kremlin, Bird Market, Interregional Centre 'Plemptitsa' ('Breeder Poultry') and many other  interesting places.

I am sorry that Dr Corti experienced some confusion due to either specific features of Moscow, Russia, Russian people and Russian life. But I think somewhat of his experience is helpful and will allow to extend his contacts all over the world.

Re your surveying the history of chicken origin, I greatly appreciate your results. It is an excellent attempt to analyze available facts and findings relevant to the problem and synthesize an original view to this vague subject of domestic fowl domestication. As to the text itself, it is reading like a thrilling detective story. To my mind, your reviews and views are absolutely fairly and deservedly cited in Crawford's 'Poultry Breeding and Genetics' (1990). Although I have not finished reading all three books you sent me, I would like to express some of my thoughts and propositions.

The Part 2 (1984) is rather sharply interrupted on the Page 26, the conclusions being not presented, though indicated in the contents as given on Page 27 (not existing). I guess that it would be better if every chapter and part would end with clean-cut conclusions and assumptions.

A hereditary scheme on Page 7 might be accompanied by gene symbols according to the Mendelian laws as follows:

P                        Rose     X     Pea

                     R/R p⁺/p⁺        r⁺/r⁺ P/P

¯

F₁              Walnut           X         Walnut

                R/r⁺ P/p⁺                  R/r⁺ P/p⁺

¯

F₂   Walnut       Rose                          Pea           Single

          9              3                              3                   1

     R/- P/-    R/- p⁺/p⁺                   r⁺/r⁺ P/-      p⁺/p⁺ r⁺/r⁺

On that same page you described the blue eggshell gene O. In Crawford's 'Poultry Breeding and Genetics' the estimate of linkage between this gene and pea comb gene P is revised to be four map units and the major pigments responsible for the blue or green shell colour are reported to be biliverdin, a zinc chelate of biliverdin, and the protoporphyrin IX, a haemoglobin porphyrin found in brown shells.

The white/brown shell colour is inherited as a multifactorial trait and may be influenced by modifying genes (Benjamin, 1920; Punnett and Bailey, 1920). So Professor G.F.Carter's suggestion on Page 9 that white is all colours, brown the result of a red-blue mix, and blue the result of suppressed red is not correct.

Are you familiar with Chapter 1, 'Origin and History of Poultry Species', from the book 'Poultry Breeding and Genetics' edited by Crawford (1990) and the following article: West, B., and Zhou, B.-X. (1989) Did chickens go north? New evidence for domestication. World's Poultry Sci.J.,  45: 205-218.

These materials confirm, supplement and expand your research. For example, Barbara West and Ben-Xiong Zhou described 90 sites in Eurasia with evidence for domestic fowl before the 1st century AD and postulated that the earliest European material may be derived from China via Russia that is in accordance with Prof L.H.Jeittless (1873) quoted by Houwink (Page 4 of your Supplement to Part 2,1985).

As to Victor Hehn's quoted remark on that same page that "Slavonians and Lithuanians have always lived apart from the Teutons, they give the chicken another name", please find enclosed my translation from a Russian article by T.Auerbakh where you can discover some additional information on the subject.

On Page 10 of the Supplement you mentioned the Latin name of bean goose as Anser fabilis L. but the second word should be written fabalis.

Chow Ben-shun cited by yourself further on Page 11 is more known as Ben-Xiong Zhou. This is the same man. But I should note that neither he and West nor Crawford (1990) indicated in their above papers the recoveries of chicken bones in Northeast Thailand.

In addition to reviews of yours, West and Zhou (1989) and Crawford (1990), I am enclosing an information on the chicken recoveries in Siberia. It seems to me that they are unknown for English speaking and reading public.

Herewith please also find a copy of Moiseyeva's article on the hierarchical system of the species Gallus gallus. The address of Dr Moiseyeva is:

Dr Mrs I.G. Moiseyeva
N.I.Vavilov Institute of General Genetics
Russian Academy of Sciences
3 Gubkin Street, GSP-1, Moscow 117809, Russia

Do you know one more paper on the subject written by the famous earlier geneticist C.B.Davenport: Davenport, C.B. (1914) The origin of domestic fowl. J.Heredity, 5.

Unfortunately, I have not its copy and do not know numbers of pages. All I am aware of is that in that paper the existence of another extinct species, Gallus giganteus, is assumed which might be a wild ancestor of the domestic fowl that marked the beginning of the Malay breed.

When Dr Corti and I were in Moscow, we failed to find one old Russian geneticist, Professor Serghei G.Petrov, an alive legend. He was born on December 18, 1903 and collaborated with another famous Russian geneticist, Professor Alexandr S.Serebrovsky. By the by, Petrov worked at the Institute of Genetics (now N.I.Vavilov Institute of General Genetics) where he prepared the Doctor of Biologic Sciences Thesis 'Origin and Evolution of the Domestic Fowl' (1944). So, it would be very interesting to establish contacts to him but I am not sure about his today's mental condition and knowledge of English. His addresses are:

Professor Serghei G. Petrov    or   Professor Serghei G. Petrov
Apt.16, 22 Bazovskaya Street         Apt.34, Block 2
Moscow 127412, Russia                  45 Dmitrovskoye Shosse Moscow 127550, Russia

Maybe, Dr Moiseyeva could assist in this matter and find him or/and his DSc Thesis.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you require any further information or assistance.

Anticipating the receipt of your reply.

With kind regards.

Yours sincerely,

Enclosures

P.S. Could you help me in looking for any information about the cape barren goose, Cereopsis novaehollandiae Lantham, ostensibly domesticated in Australia.

Poultry Farming in Ancient Siberia*

By R.Nikolayev

From the Russian magazine: Ptitsevodstvo [Poultry Farming]

No.6, p.48, 1957

(Translated by M.N.Romanov)

In 1951 the archaeological expedition of Moscow University worked in Altaian Steppe in Khakasia**. It carried out excavations of the burial vaults of III-IV centuries AD. In one of them the remains of clothes, plaster masks, dishes and other subjects were discovered which were intended by ancient people for furnishing their relatives left for the next world. The deceased were even provided with food-stuffs. A white mass lain with the thick layer near the burials attracted the archaeologists' attention. What is this? Is this really egg shell? The finding was carefully packed and delivered in Moscow where the scholars determined that these were really remains of domestic fowl eggs. Now the explorers paid a special attention to bronze pins of II-I centuries BC found in Khakasia and decorated with the depictions of seating cocks (see a drawing). The earlier findings of leather applications depicting cocks from ancient Altaian burial-mounds were remembered, too. Then long before Christ, at the Tagarsky Age, peoples of Southern Siberia bred domestic fowl. Art of poultry breeding may be borrowed by Siberian population from China where already in the III century BC ducks and chickens were utilized, if one takes into account that Southern Siberia was closely connected with China.

In the VI-X centuries AD poultry breeding was kept on by old Khakasians, descendants of Tagarsky people. There are depictions of searching chickens on Soulekskaya Rock related to those times. Later on, P.S.Pallas, visited Siberia in the XVIII century, noted that amidst the Khakasian tribe of Koibals "many... have wooden houses in the winter and among those living in yurtas some keep chickens".

In the literature of XIX century there are indications that Khakasians raised various poultry including geese, ducks, turkeys and chickens. In the XVIII century chickens were also bred by Khantians (Khants) near the river Ob. It is interesting that the name of chickens in Khakasian, "tagakh" or "tan'akh", is very close to that in Khantian "tavakh". Possibly such a coincidence is due to having gone back to a common old root.

History of poultry farming in Siberia corroborates once more that from time immemorial Siberian peoples laid the foundations of a high, distinctive culture that has flourished brightly nowadays.

Fig.: Bronze pins with depicted cocks

* The article was reprinted from the newspaper 'Krasnoyarsky komsomolets', Krasnoyarsk, Russia.

** A region situated on the left-bank side of Upper Yenisei river and administratively formed Khakasian Autonomous Region in the southwest of Krasnoyarsk Territory. The regional administrative centre is Abakan (M.Romanov).

EXCAVATIONS FROM 'GREAT SOVIET ENCYCLOPAEDIA' (GSE)

(Briefly translated by M.N.Romanov)

GSE, 2nd ed., Vol.2, 1950: "Altai ... and adjacent to it territories were settled several millenaries ago by a number of local, ancient Asiatic nationalities that later on amalgamated with different Turkic and then Mongolian tribes. In the course of many centuries the Altaians did hunting, stock-breeding, partly crop-growing as well as mining. The Altaian goods from iron, copper, silver, gold, and various precious stones got into China, Turkistan, Iran as well as Eastern Europe".

GSE, 3rd ed., Vol.25, 1976: "Tagarsky Culture, an archaeological culture, spread in the VII-III centuries BC in Minusinsk Hollow, area of Krasnoyarsk and eastern part of Kemerovo Region. Its name derived from Tagarsky Island in Yenisei river near Minusinsk. The Scythian type of arms, horse attire, bronze cauldrons and mirrors as well as the animal style in arts were inherent in T.C. The area of T.C. dispersion is one of the largest seats of bronze-foundry production in Eurasia. The T.C. monuments are earth burial-mounds. Physical type of T.C. people is Europeoid".

(This information may point out that in the past the considered part of Siberia had stable connections with both China and countries located to the west including Eastern Europe,  i.e. these good trade relations might facilitate the dispersion of poultry from China via Altai (as an intermediate site) to Turkistan and Iran as well as to Eastern Europe. Thus a new evidence for Jeittless-Houwink-West-Zhou theory may be taken from these facts and Khakasian findings.