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posted by janrinok on Wednesday November 30 2016, @11:13PM   Printer-friendly
from the giving-someone-the-bird dept.

Archaeologists have unearthed evidence that native Americans were raising turkeys for centuries before the European colonists even arrived in the Americas.

"Our research tells us that turkeys had been domesticated by 400-500 AD," explained Gary Feinman, an archaeologist at The Field Museum in Chicago, in a press release.

Dr. Feinman and colleagues found unhatched turkey eggs alongside the bones of both juvenile and adult birds at a 1,500-year-old archaeological site in Oaxaca, Mexico. "The fact that we see a full clutch of unhatched turkey eggs, along with other juvenile and adult turkey bones nearby, tells us that these birds were domesticated," Feinman said.

We know Native American cultures like the Mississippians practiced intensive agriculture. It looks like they also practiced animal husbandry. It's a much different picture from the hunter-gatherers of the modern, popular imagination.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 01 2016, @05:21AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 01 2016, @05:21AM (#435280)

    Happy Thanks...giving...from W...K...R...P.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEYyBU7FqZ0 [youtube.com]

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 01 2016, @02:14PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 01 2016, @02:14PM (#435424)

    As God is my witness, I swear I thought turkeys could fly!

    • (Score: 2) by RamiK on Thursday December 01 2016, @08:48PM

      by RamiK (1813) on Thursday December 01 2016, @08:48PM (#435657)

      I'm even domestic turkeys, let alone wild ones, could glide their way to safety.

      Well, it's either that or they've been climbing their our local department store's roof.

      --
      compiling...