2“Both the jayhawk and the man”: Julian Simon, ed., The Economics of Population: Classic Writings (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1998), 110.
3Jared Diamond, author of the bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel: Jared M. Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1999), 158.
3“Chickens do not always enjoy an honorable position”: E. B. White and Martha White, In the Words of E. B. White: Quotations from America’s Most Companionable of Writers (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011), 77.
3Though Susan Orlean declared the chicken: Susan Orlean, “The It Bird,” New Yorker, September 28, 2009.
3In 2012, as the cost of eggs shot up in Mexico City: William Booth, “The Great Egg Crisis Hits Mexico,” Washington Post, September 5, 2012.
3“They are eating pigeon and chicken”: David D. Kirkpatrick and David E. Sanger, “A Tunisian-Egyptian Link That Shook Arab History,” New York Times, February 13, 2011.
3When poultry prices tripled in Iran: Reuters, “Iran’s Chicken Crisis Is Simmering Political Issue,” July 22, 2012.
4“A commodity appears at first sight”: Nicholas Mirzoeff, The Visual Culture Reader (London: Routledge, 2002), 122.
6“Everything forgets”: George Steiner, George Steiner: A Reader (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 219.
1. Nature’s Mr. Potato Head
7On a chilly dawn in a damp upland forest: William Beebe, A Monograph of the Pheasants (London: published under the Auspices of the New York Zoological Society by Witherby & Co., 1918–1922), 172.
9“Those birds which have been pointed out”: Edmund Saul Dixon, Ornamental and Domestic Poultry: Their History and Management (London: At the Office of the Gardeners’ Chronicle, 1850), 80.
9The wolf that became the dog: Melinda A. Zeder, “Pathways to Animal Domestication,” in BoneCommons, Item #1838, 2012, accessed May 15, 2014, http://alexandriaarchive.org/bonecommons/items/show/1838.
10“Members of this most beautiful”: William Beebe, A Monograph of the Pheasants, vii.
10While other American zoos kept birds in small pens: Kelly Enright, The Maximum of Wilderness: Naturalists & The Image of the Jungle in American Culture, Rutgers University dissertation, 2009, 130.
11“Boredom is immoral”: Henry Fairfield Osborn Jr., “My Most Unforgettable Character,” Reader’s Digest, July 1968, 93.
11“Everywhere they are trapped, snared”: William Beebe, A Monograph of the Pheasants, 2:34.
11Beebe was particularly taken: Ibid., Plate XL.
12“It is seldom that I have seen”: Ibid., 179.
13Beebe concludes that the red jungle fowl: Ibid., 191.
13He was writing at the dawn of genetics: Thomas Hunt Morgan, “Chromosomes and Associative Inheritance,” Science 34, no. 880 (November 10, 1911): 638.
13The fowl’s unusual plasticity: William Beebe, A Monograph of the Pheasants, 2:191.
13In 2004, a huge international team of scientists: Genome Sequencing Center, Washington University School of Medicine, “Sequence and Comparative Analysis of the Chicken Genome Provide Unique Perspectives on Vertebrate Evolution,” Nature 432, no. 7018 (December 9, 2004): 695.
14Chickens skip the eclipse plumage phase: William Beebe, A Monograph of the Pheasants, 2:209.
15Early monarchs in the ancient Near East: Jeff Sypeck, Becoming Charlemagne: Europe, Baghdad, and the Empires of A.D. 800 (New York: Ecco, 2006), 161.
15By the Great Depression: Dian Olson Belanger and Adrian Kinnane, Managing American Wildlife (Rockville, MD: Montrose Press, 2002), 45.
15In 1937, President Franklin Roosevelt: Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act, 16 USC 669–669i, 50 Stat. 917 (1937).
15“American wildlife management officials now are facing”: The Thirty-Eighth Convention of the International Association of Game, Fish and Conservation Commissioners: September 15, 16, and 17, 1948, Haddon Hall Hotel, Atlantic City, New Jersey, International Association of Game, Fish and Conservation Commissioners (Washington, DC: The Association, 1949), 138.
16Bump and his wife, Janet, set out: “Interior scientist and wife search for foreign game birds,” news release, U.S. Department of Interior, Department Information Service, April 29, 1949.
16In 1959, the Bumps rented: “Reports on the Foreign Game Introduction Program,” U.S. Department of Interior, 1960.
16Undeterred, Bump went on: G. Bumps, “Field report of foreign game introduction program activities, Reports 6–8,” Branch of Wildlife Research, Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife, Washington, D.C., 1960.
16It was, he wrote,: “Reports on the Foreign Game Introduction Program,” U.S. Department of Interior, 1960.
17“Hold on, I have to get”: I. Lehr Brisbin Jr., interview by Andrew Lawler, 2012.
17In 1959, Pan Am inaugurated: “Pan Am Firsts,” Pan Am Historical Foundation, July 26, 2000, accessed March 25, 2014, http://www.panamair.org/OLDSITE/History/firsts.htm.
18In early 1970, as the nation: Brisbin, interview.
19He published his findings: I. Lehr Brisbin Jr., “Response of Broiler Chicks to Gamma-Radiation Exposures: Changes in Early Growth Parameters,” Radiation Research 39, no. 1 (July 1969): 36–44.
21Even Beebe’s New York Zoological Park: Brisbin, interview.
21Brisbin eventually returned: B. E. Latimer and I. L. Brisbin Jr., “Growth Rates and Their Relationships to Mortalities of Five Breeds of Chickens Following Exposure to Acute Gamma Radiation Stress,” Growth 51: 411–424.
21“I thought, wow, here’s a chance”: I. Lehr Brisbin Jr., Society for the Preservation of Poultry Antiquities, “Concerns for the Genetic Integrity and Conservation Status of the Red Junglefowl,” SPPA Bulletin 2, no. 3 (1997): 1–2.
22Plants also face challenges: Dorian Fuller, interview by Andrew Lawler, 2013.
22Searching through dusty drawers: A. T. Peterson and I. L. Brisbin Jr., “Genetic Endangerment of Wild Red Junglefowl Gallus gallus?” Bird Conservation International 9 (1999): 387–394.
23In a joint 1999 paper: Ibid.
23“You go in there and”: Leggette Johnson, interview by Andrew Lawler, 2012.
25Darwin explained such extravagance: Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (London: John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1871), 38.
26He was part of the team: “Sequence and Comparative Analysis of the Chicken Genome Provide Unique Perspectives on Vertebrate Evolution,” 695.
26In 2011, he visited: Leif Andersson, interview by Andrew Lawler, 2012.
2. The Carnelian Beard
28And lo, the Rooster King: Jay Hopler, “The Rooster King,” forthcoming; quoted by permission of the author.
28The chicken’s grandest entrance: Daniel T. Potts, A Companion to the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East (Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 843; F. S. Bodenheimer, Animal and Man in Bible Lands (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1960), 166; Richard A. Gabriel, Great Captains of Antiquity (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001), 22; Donald B. Redford, The Wars in Syria and Palestine of Thutmose III (Boston: Brill, 2003), 225; Nicolas Grimal, A History of Ancient Egypt (Paris: Librairie Arthéme Fayard, 1988), 216.
29The four exotics: J. B. Coltherd, “The Domestic Fowl in Ancient Egypt,” Ibis 108, no. 2 (1966): 217. See also John Bagnell Bury et al. eds., “The Reign of Thutmose III,” chapter 4 in The Cambridge Ancient History: The Egyptian and Hittite Empires to 1000 B.C., vol. 2 (New York: Macmillan, 1924).
29Only five foot three inches tall: Homer, “A Visit of Emissaries,” book nine in The Iliad, trans. Robert Fitzgerald (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004), 209.
29But the inscription: “The reference you have for Thutmose III is tricky since the text of the king’s annals at
Karnak is damaged. It possibly refers to birds that give birth (ms) every day. The word ms is a reconstruction and should be taken with a grain of salt. In any case, regardless of what the text of Thutmose III says, chicken would have been rare exotic animals that may have been kept in personal and/or royal zoos at this time.” Rozenn Bailleul-LeSuer, interview by Andrew Lawler, 2013.
29They were mesmerized: Glenn E. Perry, The History of Egypt (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004), 1.
30Across the Nile, on the barren: Prisse D’Avennes and Olaf E. Kaper, Atlas of Egyptian Art (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2000), 137.
30Working in the Valley of the Kings: Howard Carter, “An Ostracon Depicting a Red Jungle-Fowl. The Earliest Known Drawing of the Domestic Cock,” The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 9, no. 1/2 (1923): 1–4.
30Yet the sought-after Egyptologist: Ibid.
31It struts its stuff like any: Ibid.
31Based on its location, he: Ibid.
31The other candidate is a silver: Christine Lilyquist, “Treasures from Tell Basta,” Metropolitan Museum Journal 47 (2012): 39.
31But if the chicken was special: Bailleul-LeSuer, interview by Andrew Lawler [9AT2TK].
31They also mummified hundreds: Kathryn A. Bard and Steven Blake Shubert, eds., Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt (London: Routledge, 1999), s.v., “Saqqara.”
32While the Egyptians: Andrew Lawler, “Unmasking the Indus: Boring No More, a Trade-Savvy Indus Emerges,” Science 320, no. 5881 (June 2008): 1276–1281, doi: 10.1126/science.320.5881.1276.
33Richard Meadow and his colleague Ajita Patel: Richard Meadow and Ajita Patel, interviews by Andrew Lawler, 2013.
34West of Delhi: Vasant Schinde, interview by Andrew Lawler, 2012.
34One enterprising archaeologist recently: Sharri R. Clark, The Social Lives of Figurines: Recontextualizing the Third Millennium BC Terracotta Figurines from Harappa (Pakistan), (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2012), ch. 4.
35But recent analysis of Indus cookware: Andrew Lawler, “Where Did Curry Come From?” Slate, January 29, 2013, accessed March 18, 2014, http://www.slate.com/articles/life/food/2013/01/indus_civilization_food_how_scientists_are_figuring_out_what_curry_was_like.html.
35the archaeologist Arunima Kashyap: Ibid.
36At an Indus site called Lothal: Gregory L. Possehl, The Indus Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2002), 80.
37According to Genesis: Genesis: 11:31 (New American Bible).
37The city in 2000 BC drew traders: Daniel T. Potts, A Companion to the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, 707.
37Shulgi also is credited with: Hans Baumann, In the Land of Ur: The Discovery of Ancient Mesopotamia (New York: Pantheon Books, 1969), 111.
38One tablet, dated to the thirteenth year of Ibbi-Sin’s: Peter Steinkeller, interview by Andrew Lawler, 2013.
38A Turk invited to an American Thanksgiving: Mark Forsyth, “The Turkey’s Turkey Connection,” New York Times, November 27, 2013, accessed March 18, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/28/opinion/the-turkeys-turkey-connection.html?_r=0.
38What is called “spotted” may be “speckled”: Steinkeller, interview.
38Some specialists think that, based on a variety of clues: Daniel T. Potts, A Companion to the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, 763.
39Called “Enki and the World Order”: J. A. Black et al., “Enki and the World Order: Translation,” The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, University of Oxford, 1998–, accessed March 18, 2014, http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section1/tr113.htm.
39“No, no, the sternum”: Joris Peters, interview by Andrew Lawler, 2012.
41In 1988, for example, a Chinese: Barbara West and Ben-Xiong Zhou, “Did Chickens Go North? New Evidence for Domestication,” abstract, World’s Poultry Science Journal 45, no. 3 (1989), accessed March 18, 2014, http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=624516.
41The oldest textual evidence for Chinese chickens: Ian F. Darwin, Java Cookbook (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly, 2001), 852.
42“We are the oldest religion”: Baba Chawish, interview by Andrew Lawler, 2014.
43Scholars say that the religion: Birgul Acikyildiz, The Yezidis: The History of a Community, Culture and Religion (London: I.B. Tauris & Co., 2010), 74.
43Tawûsê Melek takes the form: Ibid.
43A massive ziggurat: Andrew Lawler, “Treasure Under Saddam’s Feet,” Discover, October 2002.
43Within one of those graves, beside the skull: Prudence Oliver Harper, Assyrian Origins: Discoveries at Ashur on the Tigris; Antiquities in the Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1995), 84.
43In the Old Testament, Assyrians are: All Things in the Bible: An Encyclopedia of the Biblical World, comp. Nancy M. Tischler (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006), 44.
44The little cylindrical box: Prudence Oliver Harper, Assyrian Origins: Discoveries at Ashur on the Tigris, 84.
44A temple dedicated to both gods was built around 1500 BC in Assur: Alvin J. Cottrell, The Persian Gulf States: A General Survey (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), 422.
44Babylon in the sixth century BC: Irving L. Finkel et al., Babylon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 11.
44The multicolored Etemenanki: David Asheri et al., A Commentary on Herodotus Books I–IV (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 201.
44Marduk had been the patron: Paul-Alain Beaulieu, “Nabonidus the Mad King: A Reconsideration of His Steles from Harran and Babylon,” in Representations of Political Power: Case Histories from Times of Change and Dissolving Order in the Ancient Near East (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2007), 137.
45When he returned: Lisbeth S. Fried, The Priest and the Great King: Temple-Palace Relations in the Persian Empire (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2004), 29.
45They granted a measure of self-government to this multiethnic society: Daniel T. Potts, The Archaeology of Elam: Formation and Transformation of an Ancient Iranian State (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 346.
46“The cock is created to oppose the demons and sorcerers”: Richard D. Mann, The Rise of Mahāsena: The Transformation of Skanda-Karttikeya in North India from the Kusāna to Gupta Empires (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 127.
46The Persians held the rooster in such esteem that it was forbidden: Maneckji Nusservanji Dhalla, Zoroastrian Civilization: From the Earliest Times to the Downfall of the Last Zoroastrian Empire, 651 A.D. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1922), 185.
46It banished the sloth-demon: Ibid.
46The bird landed “the death blow”: Ibid.
46There are no contemporary explanations: Wouter Henkelman, “The Royal Achaemenid Crown,” Archaeologische Mitteilungen aus Iran 19 (1995/96): 133.
46Another Persian sacred: The Oxford Encyclopaedia, Or, Dictionary of Arts, Sciences and General Literature, comps. W. Harris et al. (Bristol: Thoemmes, 2003), s.v. “Costume.”
46The chicken arrived in Persia: Donald P. Hansen and Erica Ehrenberg, “The Rooster in Mesopotamia,” in Leaving No Stones Unturned: Essays on the Ancient Near East and Egypt in Honor of Donald P. Hansen (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2002), 53.
46According to some traditions: Mary Boyce, A History of Zoroastrianism (Leiden: Brill, 1975), 3.
46Zoroaster, some scholars say: Ibid., 192.
46Ahura Mazda created Angra Mainyu: Ibid.
47And among Ahura Mazda’s assistants: Touraj Daryaee, The Oxford Handbook of Iranian History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 91.
47One of his tools is the rooster: Martin Haug and Edward William West, Essays on the Sacred Language, Writings, and Religion of the Parsis (London: Trübner & Co., 1878), 245.
47Such Zoro
astrian beliefs penetrated much: Andrew Lawler, “Edge of an Empire,” Archaeology Journal 64, no. 5 (September/October 2011).
47A Persian coffin: Hansen and Ehrenberg, Leaving No Stones Unturned, 53.
47The Persian prophet’s view of: Risa Levitt Kohn and Rebecca Moore, A Portable God: The Origin of Judaism and Christianity (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007), 65.
47Before the Persians came to Palestine: Gunnar G. Sevelius, MD, The Nine Pillars of History (Self-published via AuthorHouse, 2012), 237.
47The only religious authorities: Matthew 2:1 (New American Bible).
47A couple of centuries after Cyrus’s: Simon Davis, The Archaeology of Animals (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 187.
47The rooster’s crow: Mark 14:72 (New American Bible).
47By early medieval times: Accessed May 14, 2014, http://thingstodo.viator.com/vatican-city/st-peters-basilica-sacristy-treasury-museum/.
48“When you listen”: Ram Swarup, Understanding the Hadith: The Sacred Traditions of Islam (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2002), 199.
48According to some Islamic traditions: James Lyman Merrick, The Life and Religion of Mohammed: As Contained in the Sheeãh Traditions of the Hyât-ul-Kuloob (Boston: Phillips, Sampson, and Co., 1850), 196.
48One scholar thinks that the very shape: Hansen and Ehrenberg, Leaving No Stones Unturned, 61.
48The bird’s origin in the mysterious: Maarten Jozef Vermaseren, The Excavations in the Mithraeum of the Church of Santa Prisca in Rome (Neiden, Norway: Brill, 1965), 163.
48This may reflect Zoroastrian: Sanping Chen, Multicultural China in the Early Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 110.
48A Chinese legend from the: Roel Sterckx, The Animal and the Daemon in Early China (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), 42.
48Daoist priests in this period: Ibid., 41.
48A jiren, or chicken officer: Ibid.
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