Posted on 04/26/2023 10:46:33 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Conclusive evidence of chicken breeding in the Yayoi period of Japan has been discovered from the Karako-Kagi site.
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 3500 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 archeological 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...
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 archeological digs in the area; one such dig, at the 58th research point, yielded ten phasianid bones, four of which belonged to juvenile birds.
The team used a technique called Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS) to analyze the collagen in two of the juvenile phasianid bones. Previous work by Eda had shown that domestic chicken and Japanese wild pheasants had different ZooMS fingerprints; ZooMS revealed that both the two bones belonged to chickens. The collagen from one of the bones was also carbon dated to 381–204 BCE, corresponding to the middle Yayoi period.
(Excerpt) Read more at global.hokudai.ac.jp ...
Original Article:
Masaki Eda, et al. The earliest evidence of domestic chickens in the Japanese Archipelago. Frontiers in Earth Science. April 20, 2023.
DOI: 10.3389/feart.2023.1104535
Was Peter Singer there?
When they did they develop chicken sexers?
FIFY
It happened right after they got the first silk from China. To get the chickens to mate, they dressed up the hens in hosiery.
BCE means “Before the Christian Era”, right?
“In the book Incognito by David Eagelman, the author discusses the strange nature of chicken sexing. This is the valuable process of separating female and male chicks as soon as possible, because each sex has different diets and endgames (most males are just destroyed). The mystery is that when you look at the vent in the chick’s rear, some people just know which are female. It is impossible to articulate, so the Japanese figured out how to teach this inarticulable knowledge. The student would pick up a chick, examine its rear, and toss it into a bin. The master would then say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ based on his generally correct observation. After a few weeks, the student’s brain was trained to masterful levels.”
“After thousands of years of assuming that hatchlings were physiologically indistinguishable, the Japanese determined in the 1920s that chicken sexing could, in fact, be taught. The then-new Zen-Nippon Chick Sexing School did just that. It offered intensive two-year courses on how to discern pullets (female) from cockerels (male). By 1934, it had trained over 1,400 sexers, turning Japan into the guardian of what became the poultry industry’s rarest, weirdest, and most important skill.”
“The central pedagogical aspect of sexing was and remains quick repetition over a focused period of time. The sexer must become proficient at immediately and unthinkingly recognizing the chickens’ vent shapes, of which there are hundreds of slight variations. With intense exposure to chick genitalia (and lots of perished chicks, as it’s common to squeeze them too tightly when trying to puff out their vents), Japanese students were consistently able to internalize pattern recognition and intuit rather than consciously identify the markers determining sex. Some achieved accuracy rates that were close to perfect.”
Looks to be intuitive depending on the master’s training level. Picking the arrows out of the air the Zen way.
Thank you. BCE is a made up term like cis gender. Even agnostic scientists like Neil deGrasse Tyson call it ridiculous.
Big deal. It took the US to develop a dozen or so regional styles of barbeque for chicken.
Assuming you weren’t being sarcastic, it means “before the common era”, which corresponds oddly enough with the Christian era.
Such research deserves the Pullet Surprise
I first noticed its use in the late 1980s, in graduate school among Jewish professors. It was also when I first came across "critical theory."
Many such "modern" practices germinated decades ago in universities, away from public view.
This is not news. Every Japanese knows that there have always been two chickens in the front garden, and two chickens in the back garden. 🐔
The story could be the retro sequel to Chicken Of Tomorrow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1G0stojwYjI&t=66s
...4th century Before Christ (BC)...
Thank you!
Before Common Era
Bad assumption. Maximum sarcasm. And I should have so noted.
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