Early Holocene Chicken Domestication in Northern China
Early Holocene chicken domestication in northern China Hai Xianga, Jianqiang Gaob, Baoquan Yuc, Hui Zhoud, Dawei Caid, Youwen Zhanga, Xiaoyong Chena, Xi Wanga, Michael Hofreitere,1, and Xingbo Zhaoa,1 aNational Engineering Laboratory for Animal Breeding, Ministry of Agricultural Key Laboratory of Animal Genetics, Breeding, and Reproduction, College of Animal Science and Technology, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100193, China; bHebei Provincial Institute of Cultural Relic, Shijiazhuang 050031, China; cXushui County Office for Preservation of Ancient Monuments, Xushui 072550, China; dAncient DNA Laboratory, Research Center for Chinese Frontier Archaeology, College of Life Science, Jilin University, Changchun 130023, China; eFaculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Institute for Biochemistry and Biology, University of Potsdam, 14476 Potsdam, Germany; and Department of Biology, University of York, Heslington, York YO10 5DD, United Kingdom Edited by Elizabeth Matisoo-Smith, Otago School of Medical Sciences, Dunedin, New Zealand, and accepted by the Editorial Board October 23, 2014 (received for review June 24, 2014) Chickens represent by far the most important poultry species, yet of chicken domestication in particular regions over the world the number, locations, and timings of their domestication have have also been worked out using ancient DNA analysis (14–17). remained controversial for more than a century. Here we report However, the oldest chicken sequences analyzed to date are only ancient mitochondrial DNA sequences from the earliest archaeo- around 4,000 y old, substantially postdating the beginning of logical chicken bones from China, dating back to ∼10,000 B.P. The chicken domestication. results clearly show that all investigated bones, including the old- Therefore, we chose 39 ancient chicken bones from three est from the Nanzhuangtou site, are derived from the genus Gal- archaeological sites in the area of the Yellow River (Cishan, lus, rather than any other related genus, such as Phasianus.
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