Multiple lines of evidence of early goose domestication in a 7,000-y-old rice cultivation village in the lower Yangtze River, China
- Journal:
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
- Published:
- DOI:
- 10.1073/pnas.2117064119
- Affiliations:
- 7
- Authors:
- 10
Research Highlight
Goose bones point to a long history of domestication
© Stefanie Senholdt/Moment/Getty Images
Ancient goose bones from in a village in China strongly suggest that geese were domesticated 7,000 years ago, which could make geese the first poultry species to be domesticated.
Today, poultry is farmed around the world, with chicken accounting for 93% of the world’s poultry population. But there has been considerable debate about when poultry were first domesticated. While some studies have suggested chicken were domesticated as far back as the ninth millennium BCE, the evidence has been contested.
Now, a team led by researchers from Kanazawa University in Japan has subjected goose bones from a stone-age village in the Yangtze River valley to rigorous analysis. Their results all point to the bones coming from domesticated birds.
The goose population appears to have been maintained for several generations with breeding with other populations.
References
- PNAS 119, e2117064119 (2022). doi: 10.1073/pnas.2117064119
| Institutions | Authors | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Hokkaido University, Japan | 0.20 | |
| Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, China | 0.20 | |
| Kanazawa University (KU), Japan | 0.20 | |
| The University of Tokyo (UTokyo), Japan | 0.15 | |
| Lanzhou University (LZU), China | 0.10 | |
| Xiaoshan Museum, China | 0.10 | |
| University of Tsukuba, Japan | 0.05 |