Turkey domestication took place over 1,500 years ago: study

Archaeologists have unearthed a clutch of turkey eggs that were used as a ritual offering 1,500 years ago in Mexico, a finding which shows that the bird had been domesticated much earlier than previously believed.
"Our research tells us that turkeys had been domesticated by 400-500 AD," said Gary Feinman, an archaeologist at The Field Museum of Natural History in the US
"People have made guesses about turkey domestication based on the presence or absence of bones at archaeological sites, but now we are bringing in classes of information that were not available before," Feinman said.
"We're providing strong evidence to confirm prior hypotheses," he said.

Researchers discovered the eggs during an excavation in Oaxaca that was home to the Zapotec people going back thousands of years.
"It was very exciting because it's very rare to find a whole cluster of intact eggs. This was very unexpected," said Feinman.

Scanning electron microscope analysis of the eggshells confirmed that they were indeed laid by turkeys.
"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," said Feinman.
"It helps to confirm historical information about the use of turkeys in the area," he said.

The eggs were an offering of ritual significance to the Zapotec people, researchers said.
The Zapotec people still live in Oaxaca today, and domesticated turkeys remain important to them.
"Turkeys are raised to eat, given as gifts, and used in rituals," said Feinman.
"The turkeys are used in the preparation of food for birthdays, baptisms, weddings, and religious festivals," he said.
The new information about when turkeys were domesticated helps amplify the bigger picture of animal domestication in Mesoamerica.
"There were very few domesticated animals in Oaxaca and Mesoamerica in general compared with Eurasia," said Feinman.
"Eurasia had lots of different meat sources, but in Oaxaca 1,500 years ago, the only assuredly domestic meat sources were turkeys and dogs," he said.

"While people in Oaxaca today rely largely on meat from animals brought over by the Spanish (like chicken, beef, and pork), turkeys have much greater antiquity in the region and still have great ritual as well as economic significance today," Feinman said.
The turkeys that are so important to the Zapotec today are similar birds to the ones that play a role in the American tradition of Thanksgiving.
"These are not unlike the kinds of turkeys that would have been around at the first Thanksgiving, and similar to the birds that we eat today," said Feinman.
The study was published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.