Why Did the Chicken Cross the World?

by Andrew Lawler

  49When Chinese rulers: Sanping Chen, Multicultural China in the Early Middle Ages, 104.

  49Even today, one of: Historical Dictionary of Chinese Cinema, comps. Tan Ye and Yun Zhu (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2012), s.v. “Golden Rooster Awards, The.”

  49The Chinese ideogram for rooster: Deanna Washington, The Language of Gifts: The Essential Guide to Meaningful Gift Giving (Berkeley, CA: Conari Press, 2000), 86.

  49In early medieval Korea: Han’guk Munhwa Korean Culture (Los Angeles: Korean Cultural Service, 2001), 22:27.

  49In Japan, by the seventh century AD: Fukuda Hideko, “From Japan to Ancient Orient,” The Epigraphic Society Occasional Papers, 1998, 23, 105.

  49The western Chinese minority group: Michael Witzel, The Origins of the World’s Mythologies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 144.

  49A team of Japanese researchers: Tsuyoshi Shimmura and Takashi Yoshimura, “Circadian Clock Determines the Timing of Rooster Crowing,” Current Biology 23, no. 6 (2013): R231–233, doi:10.1016/j.cub.2013.02.015.

  49From Germanic graves: Leslie Webster and Michelle Brown, The Transformation of the Roman World AD 400–900 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 153.

  3. The Healing Clutch

  50“We owe a cock”: Plato, Symposium and the Death of Socrates, trans. Tom Griffith (Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Edition Limited, 1997), 210.

  50The last words of a condemned: Alexander Nehamas, Virtues of Authenticity: Essays on Plato and Socrates (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 48.

  50In ancient Greece, sacrificing: Emma Jeannette Levy Edelstein and Ludwig Edelstein, Asclepius: Collection and Interpretation of the Testimonies (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 190.

  50The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Pre-­Platonic Philosophers, trans. Greg Whitlock (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 261.

  50Others say he was expressing his: Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, Or, How to Philosophize with a Hammer, ed. Duncan Large (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 87.

  50The classicist Eva Keuls: Eva C. Keuls, The Reign of the Phallus: Sexual Politics in Ancient Athens (New York: Harper & Row, 1985), 79.

  51“Persian cock!”: G. Theodoridis, trans., “Aristophanes’ ‘The Birds,’ ” Poetry in Translation, 2005, accessed March 18, 2014, http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Greek/Birds.htm.

  51Three centuries earlier, when Homer: Homer, “A Visit of Emissaries,” book nine in The Iliad, trans. Robert Fitzgerald (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004), 209.

  51A detailed and lifelike terra-cotta rooster: Steven H. Rutledge, Ancient Rome as a Museum: Power, Identity, and the Culture of Collecting (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 88.

  51Aesop’s goose laid a golden egg: Samuel Croxall and George Fyler Townsend, The Fables of Aesop (London: F. Warner, 1866), 61.

  51“Nourish a cock, but”: Thomas Taylor, trans., Iamblichus’ Life of Pythagoras, Or, Pythagoric Life (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions International, 1986), 207.

  51The bird also was associated with Persephone: Mark P. Morford and Robert J. Lenardon, Classical Mythology (New York: McKay, 1971), 241.

  51At the time of Socrates’s death: Pierre Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2002), 548.

  52A deliciously juicy new fruit: The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome, comps. Michael Gagarin and Elaine Fantham (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), s.v. “Peach.”

  52“It was he”—the rooster—: Theodoridis, “Aristophanes’ ‘The Birds.’ ”

  53Roosters on Greek vases perch: Yves Bonnefoy, Greek and Egyptian Mythologies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 131.

  53The helmet of the famous: J. J. Pollitt, The Art of Ancient Greece: Sources and Documents (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 64.

  53Laying hens were common by Socrates’s: George Moore, Ancient Greece: A Comprehensive Resource for the Active Study of Ancient Greece (Nuneaton, U.K.: Prim-Ed, 2000), 16.

  53In the original Hippocratic oath: Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome, s.v. “Hippocratic Corpus.”

  53Called alabastrons, these little: George B. Griffenhagen and Mary Bogard, History of Drug Containers and Their Labels (Madison, WI: American Institute of the History of Pharmacy, 1999), 4.

  53There was a spacious Asklepion: Sara B. Aleshire, The Athenian Asklepieion: The People, Their Dedications, and the Inventories (Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben, 1989).

  54At Epidaurus: Helmut Koester, History, Culture, and Religion of the Hellenistic Age (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982), 167.

  54At the Asklepion on the island: Aleshire, The Athenian Asklepieion.

  54All that remains of this era: Walter J.Friedlander, The Golden Wand of Medicine: A History of the Caduceus (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1992).

  54But as late as the third century AD: Thomas Taylor, ed., Select Works of Porphyry; Containing His Four Books on Abstinence from Animal Food; His Treatise on the Homeric Cave of the Nymphs; and His Auxiliaries to the Perception of Intelligible Natures (London: T. Rodd, 1823).

  54Galen, the second-century AD Greek: Galen, On the Properties of Food (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003), 3.1.10.

  54Others recommended: Page Smith and Charles Daniel, The Chicken Book (Boston: Little, Brown, 1975), 125.

  54“Chicken offers so great an advantage to men”: Ulisse Aldrovandi, Aldrovandi on ­Chickens: The Ornithology of Ulisse Aldrovandi 1600, ed. and trans. L. R. Lind (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963), 2:259.

  55In the ancient city of Milas: Banu Karaoz, “First-aid Home Treatment of Burns Among Children and Some Implications at Milas, Turkey,” Journal of Emergency Nursing 36, no. 2 (2010): 111–14.

  55The Roman writer Pliny called it: Smith and Daniel, The Chicken Book, 125.

  55A 2000 study in Chest found: Bo Rennard et al., “Chicken Soup Inhibits Neutrophil Chemotaxis In Vitro,” Chest 118, no. 2 (2000): 1150–57.

  55Another study confirmed that: K. Saketkhoo et al., “Effects of Drinking Hot Water, Cold Water, and Chicken Soup on Nasal Mucus Velocity and Nasal Airflow Resistance,” Chest 74 (1978), 74, 408.

  55And a 2011 study by an: Matt Kelley, “Top Doctor Says Chicken Soup Does Have Healing Properties,” Radio Iowa, January 17, 2011, accessed March 19, 2014, http://www.radioiowa.com/2011/01/17/top-doctor-says-chicken-soup-does-have-healing-properties/.

  55Rooster combs, for example: Paul J. Carniol and Neil S. Sadick, Clinical Procedures in Laser Skin Rejuvenation (London: Informa Healthcare, 2007), 184.

  55The pharmaceutical company Pfizer: Alicia Ault, “From the Head of a Rooster to a Smiling Face Near You,” New York Times, December 22, 2003, accessed March 19, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/23/science/from-the-head-of-a-rooster-to-a-smiling-face-near-you.html.

  55And proteins derived from chicken bones: “Chicken Protein Halts Swelling, Pain of Arthritis Patients in Trial,” Denver Post, September 24, 1993.

  56The cargo is from dozens: Peter Schue, interview by Andrew Lawler, 2013.

  56Hippocrates described flu symptoms nearly: Niall Johnson, Britain and the 1918–19 Influenza Pandemic: A Dark Epilogue (London: Routledge, 2006), 1; Carol Turkington and Bonnie Ashby, Encyclopedia of Infectious Diseases (New York: Facts on File, 1998), 165.

  56In a normal year, the flu virus sickens millions: “Influenza (Seasonal),” World Health Organization, March 2014, accessed March 19, 2014, http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs211/en/.

  56In the global pandemic of 1918: Niall Johnson, Britain and the 1918–19 Influenza Pandemic, 82.

  56Influenza appears to be a price humans: Ibid., 33.

&
nbsp; 56Each year, scientists around the world: “Vaccine Development,” Flu.gov, accessed March 19, 2014, http://www.flu.gov/prevention-vaccination/vaccine-development/.

  58The U.S. Army in World War II: Richard W. Compans and Walter A. Orenstein, Vaccines for Pandemic Influenza (Berlin: Springer, 2009), 49.

  59American soldiers received: Ibid., 49.

  59Until recently, this has been: “FDA Approves First Seasonal Influenza Vaccine Manufactured Using Cell Culture Technology,” U.S. Food and Drug Administration news release, November 20, 2012, accessed March 19, 2014, http://www.fda.gov/newsevents/newsroom/pressannouncements/ucm328982.htm.

  59Early the following year, the FDA: Robert Roos, “FDA Approves First Flu Vaccine Grown in Insect Cells,” Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, January 17, 2013, accessed March 19, 2014, http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2013/01/fda-approves-first-flu-vaccine-grown-insect-cells.

  59He observed the mating habits of roosters: Rom Harré, Great Scientific Experiments: Twenty Experiments That Changed Our View of the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 31.

  60Instead, the Greek thinker proposed: Ibid.

  60These innovative chicken-egg: Aristotle, “Book 7: On the Heavens,” in Aristotle’s Collection (Google eBook Publish This, LLC, 2013).

  60William Harvey in seventeenth-century: Michael Windelspecht, Groundbreaking Scientific Experiments, Inventions, and Discoveries of the 19th Century (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003), 57.

  60Marcello Malpighi at Bologna: Ibid., 167.

  60Three centuries later, in 1931: Patrick Collard, The Development of Microbiology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 164.

  60By the 1950s, cancer researchers: Andries Zijlstra, interview by Andrew Lawler, 2013.

  61On October 30, 1878, a package: Stanley A. Plotkin, ed., History of Vaccine Development (New York: Springer, 2010), 35.

  61“We now have a culture”: H. Bazin, Vaccination: A History from Lady Montagu to Genetic Engineering (Montrouge, France: J. Libbey Eurotext, 2011), 152.

  62“Chance only favors the”: Stanley Finger, Minds Behind the Brain: A History of the Pioneers and Their Discoveries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 309.

  62By January of 1880, Pasteur: Plotkin, History of Vaccine Development, 36.

  62“Through certain changes”: Bazin, Vaccination, 163.

  62A Dutch doctor in Indonesia: Christiaan Eijkman, Polyneuritis in Chickens, or the Origin of Vitamin Research (papers, Hoffman-la Roche, 1990); Henry E. Brady and David Collier, Rethinking Social Inquiry: Diverse Tools, Shared Standards (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), 228; Richard Gordon, The Alarming History of Medicine: Amusing Anecdotes from Hippocrates to Heart Transplants (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1993), 63.

  63In 1910, the director of New York’s: Harry Bruinius, Better for All the World: The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America’s Quest for Racial Purity (New York: Knopf, 2006).

  63Laughlin saw chicken breeding: Francis Galton and Karl Pearson, The Life, Letters and Labours of Francis Galton, vol. 3, part 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 221.

  63In 1933, lawmakers in Nazi Germany decreed: Michael R. Cummings, Human Heredity: Principles and Issues (Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole, 2000), 13.

  63The French biologist Alexis Carrel: Andrés Horacio Reggiani, God’s Eugenicist: Alexis Carrel and the Sociobiology of Decline (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007), 41.

  63This experiment electrified: “Living Tissue Endowed by Carrel with ‘Eternal Youth’ Has Birthday; Begins Today New Year of ‘Immortality’ in Its Glass ‘Olympus’ at ­Laboratory—Age in Human Terms Is Put at 200,” New York Times, January 16, 1942.

  63Carrel was a member of a scientific: H. H. Laughlin, Report of the Committee to Study and to Report on the Best Practical Means of Cutting Off the Defective ­Germ-Plasm in the American Population (Cold Spring Harbor, NY: Eugenics Record Office, 1914).

  64At Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute: Helen Sang, “Transgenic Chickens—Methods and Potential Applications,” Trends in Biotechnology 12 (1994): 415–20.

  4. Essential Gear

  65But thirty thousand years ago: Brian M. Fagan and Charlotte Beck, The Oxford Companion to Archaeology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 543.

  65Humans then moved around the Pacific: Claudia Briones and José Luis Lanata, eds., Archaeological and Anthropological Perspectives on the Native Peoples of Pampa, Patagonia, and Tierra del Fuego to the Nineteenth Century (Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 2002), 6.

  66Not until after AD 1200: Andrew Lawler, “Beyond Kon-Tiki: Did Polynesians Sail to South America?” Science 328, no. 5984 (2010): 1344–47, doi: 10.1126/science.328.5984.1344.

  66“How shall we account for this”: A. Grenfell Price, ed., The Explorations of Captain James Cook in the Pacific, as Told by Selections of His Own Journals, 1768–1779 (New York: Dover Publications, 1971), 222.

  66Well into the twentieth century: Ben R. Finney, Voyage of Rediscovery: A Cultural Odyssey through Polynesia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 12.

  66At the insistence of the naturalist Joseph: Ibid., 7.

  66“These people sail in those seas”: Ibid., 11.

  66“When this comes to be prov’d”: James Cook, Captain Cook’s Journal During His First Voyage Round the World Made in H.M. Bark “Endeavour” 1768–71, ed. Captain W. J. L. Whartom (London: Elliot Stock, 1893; Google eBook, 2013).

  66Aboard the Endeavour: “HMS Endeavour,” Technogypsie.com, April 24, 2011, accessed March 19, 2014, http://www.technogypsie.com/science/?p=200.

  66For the Polynesians, they: John Hawkesworth, W. Strahan, and T. Cadell, An Account of the Voyages Undertaken by the Order of His Present Majesty for Making Discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere, vol. 2 (London: printed for W. Strahan and T. Cadell in the Strand, 1773; Google eBook).

  67Easter Islanders made a similar: Steven R. Fischer, Island at the End of the World: The Turbulent History of Easter Island (London: Reaktion, 2005).

  67“Chickens played an important”: Scoresby Routledge, The Mystery of Easter Island: The Story of an Expedition (London: printed for the author by Hazell, Watson and Viney, 1919), 218.

  67By Routledge’s day: Kathy Pelta, Rediscovering Easter Island (Minneapolis: Lerner Publications, 2001), 36.

  67“Humankind’s covetousness is”: Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo, The Statues That Walked: Unraveling the Mystery of Easter Island (New York: Free Press, 2011), 20.

  67Author Jared Diamond: Jared Diamond, “Easter’s End,” Discover, August 1995.

  68Hundreds of these structures: Edwin Ferdon Jr., “Stone Chicken Coops on Easter Island,” Rapa Nui Journal 14, no. 3 (2000).

  68In his 1997 book, Guns: Jared M. Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1999), 60.

  69“No Nation will ever”: James Cook, The Journals, ed. Philip Edwards (London: Penguin 2003; published in Penguin Classics as The Journals of Captain Cook, 1999), 337.

  69He estimated that there were six: Ibid., 271.

  69During Cook’s visit: A. Grenfell Price, ed., The Explorations of Captain James Cook in the Pacific, as Told by Selections of His Own Journals, 1768–1779 (New York: Dover Publications, 1971), 155.

  69Cook’s men also noted: Ibid.

  69With the possible exception: “Elizabeth Taylor Chokes on Bone,” Times-News, October 13, 1978.

  69“Why did the chicken”: John Noble Wilford, “First Chickens in Americas Were Brought from Polynesia,” New York Times, June 5, 2007, accessed March 19, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/05/science/05chic.html.

  70The chicken remains: A. A. Storey et al., “Radiocarbon and DNA Evidence for a Pre-­Columbian Introduction of Polynesian Ch
ickens to Chile,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104, no. 25 (2007): 10335–0339, doi:10.1073/pnas.0703993104.

  70The chicken arrived in Sweden: Terry L. Jones, Polynesians in America: Pre-Columbian Contacts with the New World (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2011), 142.

  70The first documented chickens: Kathleen A. Deagan and José María Cruxent, Archaeology at La Isabela: America’s First European Town (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 5.

  71The Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés: Jones, Polynesians in America, 144.

  71That zoo, built of marble: Pacific Discovery, 7–9 (California Academy of Sciences, 1955): 164.

  71Cortés noted a street: Hernán Cortés, Letters of Cortés: The Five Letters of Relation from Fernando Cortes to the Emperor Charles V, ed. and trans. Francis Augustus MacNutt (Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark, 1908), 257.

  71The Nahuatl-speaking: James Lockheart, The Nahuas after the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central Mexico, Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centuries (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), 278.

  71When a Portuguese navigator: Jones, Polynesians in America, 160.

  71Two decades later: Antonio Pigafetta, The First Voyage around the World (1519–1522): An Account of Magellan’s Expedition, ed. Theodore J. Cachey (New York: Marsilio Publishers, 1995), 8.

  71In 1527, a Spanish: Alida C. Metcalf, Go-betweens and the Colonization of Brazil: 1500–1600 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005), 127.

  72In 1848, as the biologist: Alfred Russell Wallace, Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro: With an Account of the Native Tribes and Observations on the Climate, Geology, and Natural History of the Amazon Valley (London: Ward Lock, 1889), 210.

  72One intriguing report: Jones, Polynesians in America, 145.

  72Just two years earlier: Domingo Martinez-Castilla to University of Missouri–Columbia colleagues, December 15, 1996, accessed March 19, 2014, http://www.andes.missouri.edu/Personal/DMartinez/Diffusion/msg00028.html.

  72A half century later: Raul Borras Barrenechea, ed. Relacion del Descubrimiento del Reyno del Peru (Lima: Instituto Raul Porras Barrenechea 1970), 41–60.