EAT MY GLOBE PODCAST

THE HISTORY OF THE CHICKEN: THE EGG OR THE HEN

Simon:

Hey, April.

April:

Yeah, Simon.

Simon:

How do chickens leave the building?

April:

I don’t know, Simon. How do chickens leave the building?

Simon:

Through the eggs-it.

[Laughter]

Get it. I rather like that one.

April:

Oh, that’s cracked.

Simon:

Really?

INTRO MUSIC

Simon:

Hi everybody. And as you’ve discovered, I am Simon Majumdar.

And, welcome to a brand-new episode of Eat My Globe, a podcast about things you didn’t know you didn’t know about food.

This is the 10th season of Eat My Globe.

[Clapping]

Wooo.

Yes.

April:

Cheers.

Simon:

Yes, so, thank you very, very much to everyone who listens to Eat My Globe. And, on today’s episode we’re going to look back at the origins of chickens – and, of course, eggs – and don’t worry, we shall get back to the two rather egg-cellent jokes later on. See what I did there?

[Chicken clucking sound]

Chicken is an animal whom, according to Poultry World, has become the most significant contributor to the increase of meat consumption in the world between 2000 and 2019. Now, these figures do include other poultry, such as ducks, geese, quails, pheasants, etc. But, the majority of this, er, the poultry number – [chuckling] see what I did there again – would be chickens. In fact, Poultry World says that in 2019, the consumption of poultry had almost doubled from 2000. 

What a thing.

And, according to Food and Culture Organization of the United Nations, in 2020, chickens made up nearly 94% of all the poultry in the world. They are also the most numerous domestic birds on the planet.

To put that into perspective, that would be around 24 billion chickens alive on today’s numbers. That, to put it frankly, is, well, quite a lot. It would be the equivalent of 136.76 metric kilotons of chicken consumed throughout the world in 2023.

And also, each person in the world eats an average of 161 eggs per year. Which is also, um, eggs-traordinary.

[Chicken clucking sound]

Hee and indeed hee.

Now, it’s hard to believe then that this now ubiquitous bird – that sounds like a band from the 1960s – had such an interesting beginning.

The first question of course is how did the chicken and the eggs get their names?

According to Bon Appetit magazine, the term “chicken” is actually derived from the Old English term “Ciccen” – spelled C I C C E N but pronouncing that first C as “ch”– where it was used to describe a group of baby birds. There were other descriptions to describe other types of chicken, such as “Capon,” which the Romans used to describe a castrated male chicken. It literally means to, er, “cut off.” “Pullet,” means a young chicken, which comes from the French word – “Poulette” for the feminine version and “Poulet” for the male version. And, “Rooster” meaning a male bird. And the term, “Fowl,” was previously known for the animal we now call chicken.

And, as for the egg, its name goes back to pre-Indo European history but the Old English word was “ǣg” – which is like the letters A and E kinda smushed together, and this meant the word “bird.” In Middle English, it became “Ey” or its plural form, “Eyren.” In the 1300s, the Old Norse called them “egg,” which likely stemmed from the Old English “ǣg,” The Old Norse usage won out by the 1600s, when people stopped calling them “Eyren” and started calling it “Eggs.” Now, obviously, we say the word “eggs.”

While some may claim that the chicken probably had its origins in Thailand, Myanmar, China, India or Pakistan, a scientific paper in 2021 found that it likely came from Thailand where chicken bones dated back to 1650 to 1250 BCE. Famous scientist, Charles Darwin, and subsequent DNA testing point to the Southeast Asian Red Junglefowl as the chicken’s ancestor. It is known in Latin as the “Gallus Gallus.” It is believed that the earliest farmers – known as the “Austronesians,” who lived in China into Southeast Asia – began to take the chickens with them as they moved towards the surrounding area.

At some point, this animal was mixed with another bird known as the “Gallus Sonneratii,” a grey junglefowl that originated in India. Now, whatever the full story, this is the current theory of the formation of the sort of chickens we might be familiar today. It led to today’s chicken known as “Gallus Gallus Domesticus.” Although I would like to think that the Gallus Gallus Domesticus didn’t fall too far from the poul-tree. Got it? I’m sorry there will be a lot of jokes here.

April:

This is fowl.

Simon:

[Sighs]

April:

[Laughter]

Simon:

Oh dear. Here we go.

[Chicken clucking sound]

Archeological evidence suggests that this chicken first began to be domesticated some 7,000 to 10,000 years ago.

In fact, the chicken has a direct link, believe it or not, to the Tyrannosaurus Rex. It does. In 2003, two scientists – Jack Horner and Mary Schweitzer – found un-fossilized collagen molecules inside the femur of a T-Rex. This discovery came by accident while transporting the dinosaur bone from a site, when they had to break the bone so it could fit in their helicopter. They discovered the T. Rex collagen which they then put against the collagen of living creatures. One of those matched with, you guessed it, the chicken – well, and also, ostriches. After the chicken, the next creature that was the most similar to the T-Rex was the alligator. So, that’s a little fact you can take with you to bore people with at dinner parties. You’re welcome.

[Chuckling]

Many archeologists believe that the spread of chickens began when towns began to produce rice and millet on a regular basis. They posit that the red junglefowl would have been attracted to the crops, and living near these fields made them susceptible to be caught and domesticated by humans.

Whatever the reason for the spread of chickens, they began to move around the globe on what Dr. Hanneke Meijer calls in the Guardian newspaper

Quote

A “Grand Tour.”

End quote.

The first thing to point out is that chickens cannot or can barely fly. This inability to fly makes its movement reliant on its own abilities to shuffle along the landmass itself, and more importantly, its acceptance of being taken wherever the owners decided to take it.

Studies show that chicken arrived in places such as Mesopotamia at around the time of the late second millennium BCE. It also went to areas such as the Mediterranean areas of Europe, and to Ethiopia around 800 BCE. And, from there it went to places such as Britain around the fifth and third centuries BCE and to France around the same time in history.

While farmers and farming may have helped with the spread of chickens around the world, it is believed that the early humans initially used chickens in quote, “ceremonial or symbolic role,” end quote, because they were found in burials, and texts and figurines in China. In ancient Britain, chicken bones were found intact with no sign that it had been eaten, and Julius Caesar once commented that

Quote

“The Britons consider it contrary to divine law to eat. . . the chicken. . . . They raise these, however, for their own amusement or pleasure.”

End quote.

And elsewhere, during this early history of chickens, it appears that they have been used for cockfighting. Another theory for the spread of chickens around the world is its ability to battle it out in cockfighting competitions, where the dead animals would be offered to the deities of the area.

In ancient times, the game of cockfighting was popular in India, China, and Persia. Indeed, one of the first known cockfights was held in 517 BCE in the town where the ancient Chinese philosopher, Confucius, lived.

Cockfighting then moved from being just a religious ritual to one where breeding and training the birds became an artform that resulted in profit.

Supposedly, cockfighting first began to spread to Europe with a Greek general named, Themistocles. He lived from 524 to 460 BCE and is probably more well known for the Battle of Salamis, where he outwitted the Persian navy.

As he was preparing to go to battle, Themistocles allegedly spotted two gamecocks fighting and made his soldiers watch. In an effort to inspire them, he supposedly proclaimed

Quote

“Behold, these do not fight for their household gods, for the monuments of their ancestors, for glory, for liberty or the safety of their children, but only because one will not give way to the other.”

End quote.

From there, it spread through ancient Rome. This was a civilization where cockfighting was first dismissed as

Quote

“Greek Diversion.”

End quote.

But later, it became so popular in the region that cocks were written about by authors – by Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella and Marcus Terentius Varro in their respective books about agriculture.

Varro says about breeding them

Quote

“They must choose the cocks that are muscular, with a red crest, a short, full, pointed beak, grey or black eyes, light coloured red wattles, a variegated or gold-coloured neck, the inside of the thighs hairy, short legs, long claws, large tail, close pinions; which are also erect and crow often, pertinacious in fight, and which not only do not fear the animals, which are hurtful to the hens, but which fight for them.”

End quote.

Now, what is also interesting is that, in Rome, the chicken was thought to be related to an Iron Age god, which the Smithsonian Magazine describes as

Quote

“similar to Mercury, the Roman god of ‘shopkeepers and merchants, travelers and transporters of goods, and thieves and tricksters.’”

End quote.

It was also thought to be the way that cockfighting spread throughout the Roman territories with people such as Julius Ceasar taking the sport with him on his travels to places such as Britain.

From there the chicken went through the rest of southern Europe, Sicily, and through the Low Countries. The chicken arrived in Spain likely through the Phoenician traders around 776 to 540 BCE, in the areas of the Rhine and the Danube Rivers likely through trade with the Celtic peoples in the late 6th and early 5thcentury BCE, and throughout medieval Europe through Christianity. And, from there, much later on, to the Americas. But, we shall get to that later.

What that meant was that cockfighting shed its ritualistic history and became a very popular non-religious sport. As Andrew Lawler notes in Slate magazine,

Quote

“The sport became a place for men of many classes to meet, take financial risks, and watch male animals demonstrate raw courage.”

End quote.

And in the 18th century in the US, Elaine Shirley, Manager of Rare Breeds for Colonial Williamsburg’s Coach and Livestock Department puts it,

Quote

“Cockfighting was the second most popular sport after horse racing. Everyone went. People from every class owned gamecocks.”

End quote.

Now, while many countries have banned cockfighting, there are still those that allow it. Which make me think it was one of the oldest sport that still exists. Perhaps even the oldest.

Well, now we have cockfighting out of the way, well not quite, but perhaps we can continue with the more pressing question of how the chicken got to be some of the most eaten meats, and eggs some of the most eaten proteins in the world.

[Chicken clucking sound]

BREAK MUSIC

While the gamecock was already beginning to spread around the world, the edible bird was a bit later to the party.

In a city called Maresha in what is now part of Israel, archaeologists think that this city holds the proof of when the chicken started to be eaten. This is a city that was at its peak from around 400 BCE to 200 BCE. Now this is obviously quite a bit later in the cycle of the chicken that started around 10,000 years ago.

The archaeologists came to the conclusion that people were eating chicken and not just using them for religious purposes or for cockfights because they found a lot of chicken bones –  significantly more than those found in other archaeological sites where they found chicken bones. And, unlike those other sites where archaeologists found bones of cocks at the ratio of 3:1 for male against female, the majority of the chickens being slaughtered for food in Maresha were female. In fact, it numbered nearly in a ratio of 2:1 for females against males. The chicken bones also had butchery cuts. Archaeologists suggest that chicken became a food source when it reached Maresha because chicken adapted to the

Quote

“relatively dry Mediterranean environment . . . [that] led to various morphological changes over time.”

End quote.

The find in Maresha suggests that the spread of chicken as a food source originated in the Levant around the 1st century BCE.

As the chicken spread as a food source, it became highly prized. Indeed, in ancient Greece, chickens were so valued that there was an anecdote about a gentleman who did not want to go to the public baths while he was boiling his chicken because he thought his servants might steal the chicken broth. When a friend suggested he should ask his mother to watch the pot, he supposedly responded,

Quote

“Am I going to trust chicken broth to my mother?”

End quote.

Ouch. My mother would never! Anyway. [Laughter]

Around that time, it appears that ancient Romans liked to eat omelets, as well as, I am told, chicken stuffed with mashed brains.

In fact, chicken was also so desired amongst the ancient Roman fine diners that it became popular to fatten up the birds up before selling them. As authors Jerry Adler and Andrew Lawler note in the Smithsonian Magazine,

Quote

“Farmers began developing methods to fatten the birds—some used wheat bread soaked in wine, while others swore by a mixture of cumin seeds, barley and lizard fat.”

End quote.

I do rather like that sound of wheat bread soaked in wine. It makes me feel peck-ish.

[Laughter]

[Chicken clucking sound]

April:

[Laughter]

Simon:

I am really sorry. I know.

Moving on.

Fattened chicken became so popular that a law called, “Lex Faunia,” was passed in 161 BCE which forbade a family and their guests to eat more than one whole chicken per meal. However, to get around this law, ancient Romans found a loophole and had already come up with their own solution, which was the creation of the “capon,” that is a male bird that had been castrated. Apparently, castrating male birds naturally fattens them up. Who knew.

However, once the Roman Empire began to flounder around September 476 CE, the popularity of chickens as food became a thing of the past.

But, the chicken would rise again.

By around 1,000 CE, the Catholic Church began to ban red meat – or animals with four legs – on fast days.  Those lasted about 130 days per year. Red meat included pork, beef, lamb and goat, for example. The ban was meant to show self-discipline. This led other people to look for other meats to supplement their diet. To comply with the Church’s rule, people found poultry as ideal. This red meat ban may have led to the evolutions of chickens.

The evolution occurred with the development of a TSHR variant relating to the thyroid that fattens up chickens. Don’t ask me to explain the science of it all but from what I can gather, this variant did not exist until about the time of the red meat ban. The theory goes that people started eating more chickens and thus, breeding more of them. And in breeding these chickens, they selected those that laid more eggs and those that were bigger. As they got bred, this variant that allowed for bigger chickens developed. So, there you go. Thanks to the Catholic Church and their red meat bans for our bigger chickens today.

Moving on to the Middle Ages. According to Philip Slavin, author of “Chicken Husbandry in Late Medieval Eastern England: c. 1250-1400,”

Quote

“Chicken meat constituted an important part of everyday diet, and it was afforded by virtually every social stratum both in England and the Continent.”

End quote.

So, chickens had now begun to move from the manor houses to the peasantry.

Let me fast forward to the 19th century and to Queen Victoria’s adoration of her hens. It was in 1843, she was taken with a particular gift of a Cochin China Fowl, and Brahma Fowl. Indeed, so taken was she that she would send eggs across the globe to various royal relatives. Now, one is not suggesting that she ate the royal hens. But, according to Annie Gray’s book, “The Greedy Queen,” it did not stop her from eating chickens during her lavish dinners. A decision, I would think, was followed by Royal watchers.

This seemed particularly true in the United States – a nation that, despite its recent move to not be part of the colonies of Great Britain, still, apparently, as the New York Times notes

Quote

“pored over periodicals that presented the Hanoverians’ successes and failures in highly personal terms, a fascination that continued through the 19th and 20thcenturies.”

End quote.

There is a disputed theory that Polynesians took the chickens with them to South America before Christopher Columbus arrived in the Americas. This theory is based on radiocarbon and DNA testing of chicken bones found in Chile that date back to around 1321 to 1407 CE. Because of how much older these chicken bones appear to be, the theory suggests that the Polynesians first arrived in the Americas before Christopher Columbus, who sailed into Hispaniola on his second voyage of exploration in 1493. The theory further goes that when Francisco Pizarro arrived in Peru in 1532, he saw that the Incan communities already had chickens with them. And, those chickens had already been part of the community.

Other scientists dispute that theory based on a comparison of the DNA of Polynesian and South American chickens. Testing shows that these chickens were quote, “genetically distinct,” end quote, which suggests that the South American chickens are unrelated to the Polynesian chickens. They also note that the Pacific rat, which stowed away with the Polynesians during their travels, cannot be found in South America, thus strengthening the claim that chickens did not arrive with the Polynesians before Columbus. So, I guess no one could still answer the question, why did the chicken cross the Pacific?

[Laughter]

[Chicken clucking sound]

April:

Oh.

Simon:

Go. . .

Oh dear.

Okay. See what I did there again?

Anyway.

[Laughter]

While we may not definitively know how chickens arrived in South America, we do know that the English colonists took chickens with them on their voyage to what is now the USA. And, in 1623, when the Wampanoag leader, Massasoit, fell ill, probably from typhus, Edward Winslow, a Pilgrim diplomat, offered to make him chicken soup. So even then, it seems like chicken soup has always been seen as restorative.

In the 1700s, chickens were abundant in the American colonies. Ed Crews from Colonial Williamsburg notes, chickens

Quote

“appeared on plantations and middle-class farms, around slave quarters, in cages aboard ships at sea, and in the streets of cities and towns.”

End quote.

However, despite the ubiquity of chickens, Americans in the colonial era preferred to eat pork and beef. The chicken, however, was popular in the Southern US. Author Emelyn Rude argues that the chicken’s popularity in the South was down to the “Dunghill Fowl” – chickens that were thought to have stopped laying eggs and which the enslaved were able to take as their own livestock, when they were unable to have pigs or cows for their own usage. Although, they might have been given some of the pig and cow parts.

Many began selling the

Quote

“feathers, eggs and meat”

End quote.

To support themselves, where they became known locally as

Quote

“The General Chicken Merchants of the South.”

End quote.

However, by the middle of the 1800s, Americans started to eat less of the chicken and more of the eggs. And by the end of the 19th century, chickens had become a much rarer item as people moved towards the cities. So, you had the enslaved with their stock, but you also had workers in the city, where the supply was limited, and the prices, astronomical.

As author Emelyn Rude puts it

Quote

“A food only largely available during the spring, the exorbitant costs of a chicken for sale in city markets elevated the food from pedestrian Sunday Supper into something, as the ladies’ magazine Good Housekeeping remarked in 1885, ‘sought by the rich because [it is] so costly as to be an uncommon dish.’”

End quote.

Indeed, the chicken salad was THE dish in the late 1800s.

But chicken would become commonplace again.

In 1877, a dentist who lived in Petaluma, California named Isaac Dias created the first incubator – a machine that was capable of keeping eggs at the same temperature of the brooding chicken’s body, that is, 103oF. He later joined forces with one of his patients, Lyman Byce, who came to Petaluma for the healthy sea air and the soil of the region.

In the early 1880s, Dias, along with his neighbor, Thomas R. Jacobs, patented a heat regulator for an incubator. Dias started selling and manufacturing his incubator.

Then, as one article in the “Petaluma Historian” described it,

Quote

“In 1881, Byce—the Steve Jobs to Dias’ Steve Wozniak— joined Dias in forming the Petaluma Incubator Company, soon setting up their factory in a former armory near the Washington Street Bridge.”

End quote.

However, in 1884, Dias died in a duck hunting accident. While there was no proof of FOWL play, a few articles described it as “mysterious.” Byce then began to manage the company alone and declared himself to be

Quote

“father of chickendome.”

End quote.

Petaluma became the “Egg Basket of the World.” And because of the incubator, by the 1920s, one in five eggs supplied in the United States would come from the Petaluma Incubator Company.

The second development in making the chicken commonplace again would be the beginning of what became known as the battery farming of chickens. In the early part of the 20thcentury, this became one of the key ways of keeping chickens. Chickens were kept indoors and protected from predators, were fed at set hours with vitamins, and were kept in the same space as other chickens. This did however, over time, led to a public outcry over this type of farming. In 2012, Europe banned the practice. In the US, certain companies pledged that they would only use cage-free eggs to make their products.

In 2021, Sentient Media says that chicken farming in battery pens is still going on here in America. And, while it may make food cheaper, it has many adverse effects on the animals like risks for injuries and diseases. We still have a long way in America to go on that front.

And, the third development in making chickens more commonplace again is the growth of fast-food restaurants like Mc Donalds and KFC who offer things like Chicken McNuggets and most of the majority of KFC’s menu at inexpensive prices – prices that make chicken look like the cheap animal it has become today.

Now, I believe there are some moves to move back towards some of the heritage chickens. Things such as the “Jidori” chicken originally from Japan. Or, one of my favourites, the “Poulet de Bresse,” which is what I believe, and many others consider to be the best chicken in the world. A chicken that, once tasted by King Henri IV of France in the 16th century, he promised his subjects that they would always have poule au pot or chicken stew. A truly glorious chicken. But, the truth is right now, chicken is still a cheap animal.

However, it is still worth thinking of all those dishes that we’ve loved in the past. Oh. Glorious southern style chicken soaked in buttermilk and then fried until golden.

[Inhales deeply]

The amazing Chicken Tikka Masala – which you can find on my website with other chicken recipes. Chicken Karaage from Japan. Arroz con Pollo from Spain. Peri Peri Chicken, which the Portuguese took with them to Africa, and which I also now have a recipe you can check out on my website. Coq au Vin, a rooster braised in red wine. One of my wife’s favorite dishes, Inasal Na Manok from the Philippines that is marinaded in vinegar and spices before being placed on the grill and brushed with annatto oils. Oh.

[Inhales deeply]

Juicy kebabs from, well, everywhere. Lucknow kebabs from India. Kebabs from Iran, Turkey, Armenia.

[Inhales deeply]

Oh.

Ayem Goreng from Indonesia, a delicious piece of fried chicken with tamarind and turmeric sauce.

Well, I could go on. But, if this episode has taught you anything, it is that wherever you go in the world, they will always have some chicken dishes you can try.

Now, before we finish, let’s deal with those two riddles.

Our first question. What came first – the chicken or the egg?

Well, it is actually more difficult to answer than some may suggest. Bird eggs evolved about 300 million years ago, according to New Scientist, and existed well before chickens were created. As we said, chickens existed around 10,000 years ago. And there is even a suggestion that the chicken evolved from the junglefowl 58,000 years ago. So, you could argue, based on that fact that eggs have been around for millions of years and chicken only thousands of years, so the egg came first.

However, as New Scientist points out again, it would take a chicken, to create a chicken egg. So perhaps the chicken would have come first.

I’m not sure if that clears up any of that riddle, but it’s an interesting argument.

And, the second one. Hmmm. Why did the chicken cross the road?

Well, the obvious answer is “to get to the other side.” This was a joke that first appeared in a New Yolk magazine. . .

Oh gah. . .

[Chicken clucking sound]

[Laughter]

Sybil:

[Laughter]

Simon:

I didn’t write all the jokes in here.

Sybil:

I did.

[Laughter]

April:

[Laughter]

Sybil:

[Cackling]

Simon:

Yes, yes. My missus wrote all the. . . all the bad jokes in here.

And I’m only reading some of it now.

Sybil:

[Laughter]

Simon:

Ah. Okay.

Excuse me, New York magazine – called “The Knickerbocker” in 1847. The joke in that article actually goes like this:

Quote

“There are 'quips and quillets’ which seem actual conundrums, but yet are none. Of such is this: 'Why does a chicken cross the street?’ Are you 'out of town?' Do you 'give it up?' Well, then: 'Because it wants to get on the other side!'”

End quote.

Which is apparently a 19th century idea of anti-humour.

[Chicken clucking sound]

[Sighs]

Or, perhaps, FOWL humour.

Gah. . .

April:

[Laughter]

Sybil:

[Cackling]

Simon:

Oh. Kill me now. Please kill me now.

[Laughter]

Sybil:

[Cackling]

Simon:

So, there you go.

Okay, folks. We will see you next week. And in the meantime – here’s a joke that I wrote – have an egg-cellent week. Egg-cellent week.

[Laughter]

OUTRO MUSIC

Simon:

Make sure to check out the website associated with this podcast at www.EatMyGlobe.com where we will be posting the transcripts from each episode, along with all the references and resources we used putting the episodes together, in case you want to delve deeper into each subject. Theres’s also a contact button, so please do let us know if there are any subjects that you would like us to cover.

And, if you like what you hear, please don’t forget to join us on Patreon, subscribe, recommend us to your family and friends and give us a good rating on your favorite podcast provider.

Thank you and goodbye from me, and we’ll speak to you soon on the next episode of EAT MY GLOBE: Things You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know About Food.

CREDITS

The EAT MY GLOBE Podcast is a production of “It’s Not Much But It’s Ours” and “Producer Girl Productions.”

[Chicken Clucking Sound]

We would also like to thank Sybil Villanueva for all of her help with the editing of the transcripts and her essential help with the research. And in the case of this, all her horrible jokes.

April:

[Laughter]

Oh, I love it.