Last summer, I wrote this post on the possible Polynesian origin of South American chickens. In July, Gongora et al published a response to that study, titled “Indo-European and Asian origins for Chilean and Pacific chickens revealed by mtDNA.”
The authors sequenced the HVS-I region of 41 modern Chilean chickens, and compared their data to ~1000 published modern and ancient sequences. Contrary to Storey et als data, the prehistoric sequences were found to belong to the “single most common chicken haplotype found” worldwide, a haplotype which also includes common Asian and European varieties.
The authors of the present study also note that if the prehistoric dates are calibrated to account for proximity to a marine environment, which in archaeological terms:
can exhibit older apparent radiocarbon ages because of the uptake of carbon that has already undergone radioactive decay though long residence times in the deep ocean (10309)
then the dates for the Chilean chicken samples from El Arenal could be securely dated as Pre-Columbian only if less than 20% of the diet came from marine sources.
Looks like Storey’s team has a ways to go to prove a Polynesian origin for New World chickens.
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Gongora J, Rawlence NJ, Mobegi VA, Jianlin H, Alcalde JA, Matus JT, Hanotte O, Moran C, Austin JJ, Ulm S, Anderson AJ, Larson G, & Cooper A (2008). Indo-European and Asian origins for Chilean and Pacific chickens revealed by mtDNA. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 105 (30), 10308-13 PMID: 18663216
Tags: chicken DNA, Chile, mtDNA, South America
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