The first domestic chickens we have found lived no earlier than 3,670 years ago, suggesting they have a far shorter history than we thought. These birds don't seem to have been raised for their meat, (make) it unclear what drove domestication. The chickens alive today descend from a wild bird native to South-East Asia(call) the red jungle fowl, but exactlydomestication occurred was unclear. Some researchers have estimated that the first domestic chicken lived more than 6000 years ago, while others claim(find) chicken bones at 10,000-year-old sites. analysis by Ophelie Lebrasseur at the Centre for Anthropobiology and Genomics of Toulouse in France and her team concludes that the(early) clear evidence of domestic chickens appeared between 1,650 BC and 1,250 BC at a site called Ban Non Wat in central Thailand. Not only(be) chicken bones superabundant at the site, but there are signs that people were buried with thee birds, Lebrasseur says makes a domestic relationship clear. Lebrasseur and her team suspect chicken domestication might have been triggered by the(appear) of cereal farming in South-East Asia. "This created a more open, less tree-covered environment, which is actually an environment where red jungle fowl thrive," she says, "And they could have fedthe waste from human societies."
