Pré-Columbian (Araucana) New Finding

[quote="kermit"]

[size=85]
The closest living relative of the genus Gallus is Pternistis, a group of closely related African Francolins. We can envision the common ancestor of the Junglefowl and African Francolins as a bird not unlike a female Ceylon or Green Junglefowl in size and morphology. Many of the Araucanian hens of South America and Easter Island, especially the Colloncas and Ona with their henny feathering and diminutive size, are in many ways a complete reversal or throw back to ancestral phenotype. This is also true of many dabbling ducks closely related to the mallard, which are endemic to oceanic islands.[/size]

Citation :

plesiomorphic Applied to a character state that is based on features shared by different groups of biological organisms and inherited from a common ancestor. The term is taken from the Greek plesios, ‘near’, and morphe, ‘form’, and means ‘old-featured’. The features to which it is applied were formerly called ‘primitive’. It is the opposite of apomorphic.
]


That's a wonderful article Rosalyn. Thank you for posting it. It asks a few questions that require some elucidation.
Ongoing research at Lund Uppsala, Kagoshima University and also within specialist groups working within the Chicken Genome Project have made some startling discoveries via utilization of Nuclear DNA, which maps the male DNA ancestry versus the mtDNA of the female ancestry.
Previous molecular work only studied the mtDNA and from that work along with RFLP types, it was established that single subspecies ( Burmese/Thailand) of the Red Junglefowl, Gallus gallus, suffices as the sole matriarchal ancestor of 99% of all known domestic breeds. The following photos are of the nominate mainland form of the Red Junglefowl:


Gallus gallus

These next photos are of the Indonesian Red Junglefowl Gallus bankiva. While it is listed as a subspecies of the nominate mainland ( Burmese) Red, it is genetically as distinct from that aforementioned form, as the the Coyote is distanced from the Grey Wolf. The Indonesian Red Junglefowl split from the Indian Red Junglefowl ( G. murghi) during the Pleistocene. The Burmese Red Junglefowl spit from the Indian Red JF ~ 78 Thousand years ago. At any rate here are some photos of the Indonesian Red Junglefowl Gallus bankiva:



Gallus bankiva

Nevertheless, another subspecies of the Red Junglefowl, the Indonesian Red Junglefowl, Gallus bankiva,phenotypically very similar with the nominate form, was also shown ( RFLP studies) to be the matriarchal ancestor of a tiny number of archaic Indonesian/Oceania breeds. This is significant because the early Indonesian cultures domesticated their indigenous Red Junglefowl ~ 1500 years before the cultures of Thailand and Burma domesticated theirs. The first domesticated chicken breeds were fighting games. These were not the sadistic betting matches of the modern crowd, but rather, the ceremonial and spiritual foundations of a very ancient culture.
What is more, the Indonesian Red Junglefowl is genetically completely compatible with the Burmese Red Junglefowl. In other words, trade between the respective cultures resulted in the crossing of their separately derived stocks. Both male and female crosses between the Red Junglefowl subspecies were fully fertile. Indeed, hybrid vigour very likely resulted in Heterosis or "hybrid vigour":

Citation :

Heterosis is a term used in genetics and selective breeding. The term heterosis, also known as hybrid vigour or outbreeding enhancement, describes the increased strength of different characteristics in hybrids; the possibility to obtain a genetically superior individual by combining the virtues of its parents.


Heterosis is the opposite of inbreeding depression, which occurs with increasing homozygosity. The term often causes controversy, particularly in terms of the selective breeding of domestic animals, because it is sometimes believed that all crossbred plants or animals are genetically superior to their parents; this is true only in certain circumstances : when a hybrid is seen to be superior to its parents, this is known as hybrid vigor. When the opposite happens, and a hybrid inherits traits from their parents that makes them unfit for survival, the result is referred to as outbreeding depression. Typical examples of this are crosses between wild and hatchery fish that have incompatible adaptations.

Two competing hypotheses, not necessarily mutually exclusive, have been developed to explain hybrid vigour:

* Dominance hypothesis. The dominance hypothesis attributes the superiority of hybrids to the suppression of undesirable recessive alleles from one parent by dominant alleles from the other. It attributes the poor performance of inbred strains to loss of genetic diversity, with the strains becoming purely homozygous at many loci.
* Overdominance hypothesis. Certain combinations of alleles that can be obtained by crossing two inbred strains are advantageous in the heterozygote. The overdominance hypothesis attributes to heterozygote advantage the survival of many alleles that are recessive and harmful in homozygotes. It attributes the poor performance of inbred strains to a high percentage of these harmful recessives.

Nearly all the field corn ( originally domesticated by aboriginal South and Central Americans) now grown in the United States and most other developed nations is hybrid corn. Modern corn hybrids substantially outyield conventional cultivars and respond better to fertilization.

Heterosis in maize was famously demonstrated in the early 20th century by George H. Shull and Edward M. East after hybrid corn was invented by Dr. William James Beal of Michigan State University based on work begun in 1879 at the urging of Charles Darwin. Dr. Beal's work led to the first published account of a field experiment demonstrating hybrid vigor in corn, by Eugene Davenport and Perry Holden, 1881. These various pioneers of botany and related fields showed that crosses of inbred lines made from a Southern dent and a Northern flint, respectively, showed substantial heterosis and outyielded conventional cultivars of that era. However, at that time such hybrids could not be economically made on a large scale for use by farmers. Donald F. Jones at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, New Haven invented the first practical method of producing a high-yielding hybrid maize in 1914-1917. Jones' method produced a double-cross hybrid, which requires two crossing steps working from four distinct original inbred lines. Later work by corn breeders produced inbred lines with sufficient vigor for practical production of a commercial hybrid in a single step, the single-cross hybrids. Single-cross hybrids are made from just two original parent inbreds. They are generally more vigorous and also more uniform than the earlier double-cross hybrids. The process of creating these hybrids often involves detasseling.

The concept of heterosis is also applied in the production of commercial livestock. In cattle, hybrids between Black Angus and Hereford produce a hybrid known as a “Black Baldy.” In swine, “blue butts” are produced by the cross of Hampshire and Yorkshire. Other more exotic hybrids such as “beefalo” are also used for specialty markets.

Within poultry, sex-linked genes have been used to create hybrids in which males and females can be sorted at one day old by color. Specific genes used for this are genes for barring and wing feather growth. Crosses of this sort create what are sold as Black Sex-links, Red Sex-links, and various other crosses that are known by trade names.

Commercial broilers are produced by crossing different strains of White Rocks and White Cornish, the Cornish providing a large frame and the Rocks providing the fast rate of gain. The hybrid vigor produced allows the production of uniform birds with a marketable carcass at 6-9 weeks of age.

Likewise, hybrids between different strains of White Leghorn are used to produce laying flocks that provide the majority white eggs for sale in the United States.

The Colloncas was intentionally bred to the Quetero in South America. The composite stock are the founders of the North American Colloncas de Artes or Tufted Rumpless Araucana ( though we should be certain that any number of other breeds were used as well).A different composite between Mapuche/Quechua, Quetero and Colloncas resulted in the Falklands Islands Hen which gave rise to the U.K. Araucanian hen and the Americauana. The original archaic breeds of the native peoples were highly inbred. South American Indians were master selective breeders. The number of cultivars of chiles, beans, corn, potatoes, cotton and sunflowers, the quinoa and camelides they generated is fairly astonishing. Backcrossing after outcrossing is the method they apparently utilized to the best efficiency.

We must remember that for early cultures working with stock that was only very early on its evolution from wild founders, it was very nearly impossible to distinguish one individual animal or flock from another. The stock would also produce a large percentage of individuals whose instincts obliged them to go feral at adult hood, especially during nesting. Trade between different cultures with their respective gene stock, descended of divergent wild progenitors, would theoretically result in the generation of readily discernible stock.In other words, a few chicks would hatch that exhibited features that made them stand out from the others. Thus, with each successive generation of selective breeding, the stock was sculpted into increasingly divergent sub races.
This was a two part process. After outcrossing between divergent stocks, for example between a bankovoid game male and a Vietnamese game hen ( again, the game breeds were early offshoots of the wild progenitors) subsequent close inbreeding of stock put these lineages through prerequisite genetic bottlenecks which resulted in a higher expression of certain mutations. The degradation of genes carried by the wild founders is necessary to produce a domestic breed. Extinction via domestication is how the captive populations of Golden Pheasant, Muscovy and Mandarin Ducks, Helmeted Guineafowl and Indian Peafowl to name a few-are becoming increasingly homogenized in the quest for desired mutations. The early indigenous peoples of Indonesia were basically carving whole loci of genes from the DNA strand by close inbreeding. This is how domesticated breeds were created.

Citation :

Bottlenecks and Founder Effects

Genetic drift can cause big losses of genetic variation for small populations.

Population bottlenecks occur when a population’s size is reduced for at least one generation. Because genetic drift acts more quickly to reduce genetic variation in small populations, undergoing a bottleneck can reduce a population’s genetic variation by a lot, even if the bottleneck doesn’t last for very many generations. This is illustrated by the bags of marbles shown below, where, in generation 2, an unusually small draw creates a bottleneck.



Loss of genetic variation as a result of a population bottleneck

Reduced genetic variation means that the population may not be able to adapt to new selection pressures, such as climatic change or a shift in available resources, because the genetic variation that selection would act on may have already drifted out of the population.
l

An example of a bottleneck:
Northern elephant seals have reduced genetic variation probably because of a population bottleneck humans inflicted on them in the 1890s. Hunting reduced their population size to as few as 20 individuals at the end of the 19th century. Their population has since rebounded to over 30,000—but their genes still carry the marks of this bottleneck: they have much less genetic variation than a population of southern elephant seals that was not so intensely hunted.

Founder effects
A founder effect occurs when a new colony is started by a few members of the original population. This small population size means that the colony may have:

* reduced genetic variation from the original population.
* a non-random sample of the genes in the original population.

For example, the Afrikaner population of Dutch settlers in South Africa is descended mainly from a few colonists. Today, the Afrikaner population has an unusually high frequency of the gene that causes Huntington’s disease, because those original Dutch colonists just happened to carry that gene with unusually high frequency. This effect is easy to recognize in genetic diseases, but of course, the frequencies of all sorts of genes are affected by founder events.

Early mutations the ancient cultures may have been selecting for, may have been melanistic sports and/or leucistic sports. Close inbreeding was necessary to make these traits dominant in a population. For example, a single sire may have been the sole male founder of closely bred stock and for multiple generations. One generation of people would pass down their invaluable stock to the next. An Indonesian spice trader, originally from Java, might end up relocating his family in Bangkok Thailand, and with his grandfather's prize fighting game cock. The Indonesian spice trader's son is married to a local Thai village chief's daughter. The daughter's family presents the Indonesian family with a prized Thai game hen. That one Bankivoid rooster, bred to the mother or sister of a local Thai fighting champion, would theoretically be the founders of a new generation, and though new females may have been introduced on occasion, the patrilinear line remained intact for five or fifteen more human generations. In other words, the Indonesian family maintained their patrilinear line for as long as their family remained in that village in Thailand which may have been several human generations. What is more, this family may have even carried that stock- now admixtured- back to Indonesia- four of five hundred chicken generations later. Now their stock has the mtDNA signature of the Burmese Red JF but the Nuclear DNA of the Indonesian Red JF because no other males but sons of that one bankivoid founder sired chicks for all those generations. That is how unique strains were created which would eventually generate unique breeds.
It should be remembered that based upon genetic analysis, male chickens were transported much further and more often than female chickens. A prized champion game cock or long crower might be transported from Indonesia, to Thailand and then all the way to the Phillipines or Japan. In the case of the early migrants onto the archipelagos bridging Indonesia with Oceania, the Pacific and South America, the distances were even greater.

F.

kermit a écrit:

Citation :

The genus Gallus is originated from Asia and comprises four species (Hutt, 1949): Gallus varius (Shaw.), Gallus sonneratii (Temminck), Gallus lafayettei (Lesson) and Gallus gallus (Linné). According to Darwin (1875), the domestic fowl originates from the species G. gallus (Gallus gallus domesticus), and molecular analyses of mitochondrial DNA have confirmed that G. gallus is the monophyletic origin of the domestic fowl (Fumihito et al., 1996; Fumihito et al., 1994).

Domestication of Gallus gallus fowls started in Taiwan and neighbor regions in Southeastern Asia (Wood-Gush, 1959; Zeuner, 1963; Fumihito et al., 1994, 1996), and it was brought to China in 6000 a.C. (West & Zhou, 1988). Evidences of hen domestication were found in 16 Neolithic archeological sites in Northeastern China, corroborating the above-mentioned findings. It is believed that domestication of fowls was related to religious aspects (Zeuner, 1963), and also to leisure (codkfighting) and adornment (use of feathers in clothes).

Studies performed by Komiyama et al. (2003) and Komiyama et al. (2004) have demonstrated the relationship between the origin of different native Japanese breeds and cultural traditions. The birds were brought to Japan through two different routes, Central China and Southeastern Asia, and originated the Shamo breed (Komiyama et al., 2003). This is a traditional breed of fighting roosters that was involved in the formation of many Japanese breeds. Besides, singing roosters are another cultural tradition in Japan, and the three Japanese breeds of singing roosters have also originated from Shamo (Komiyama et al., 2004), which evidences that our ancestors have first tried to domesticate the birds for cultural purposes before raising them as food sources.

To reiterate:
Early agricultural centres of South and Southeastern Asia were founded on what could be termed as fore bearers of the chicken industry. Whole villages/regions dedicated themselves to the selective breeding and refinement of the domestic fowl, included Western India, Sri Lanka, Bali, Java, Sumatra, Thailand, Cambodia Vietnam and Taiwan. The fighting game industries of Sri Lanka, Bali, Java and Sumatra preceded those of India, Cambodia, Vietnam and Taiwan by nearly two thousand years.


The Ceylon Junglefowl, G. lafayetti, ( this is a juvenile male) is genetically basal or ancestral to the Grey Junglefowl G. sonnerati. Nuclear DNA studies suggest that the Peacomb gene is one of the rare alleles unique to the Ceylon JF and domestic chickens with Ceylon JF sires/ genetic bottleneck in their ancestry

However, as Nuclear DNA studies got under way we learned a great deal more about the Patrilinear ( male) ancestors. We learned that while the female ancestors of most domestic chicken breeds was the nominate Red JF, and a few bankiva Red JF, most fighting Games had Bankivoid male ancestors.
What is also interesting and more pertinent to the Araucanian hen, the Bantam breeds were also in generation and only a few hundred years behind the Games.
As we have read in the recent papers regarding yellow skin pigment gene, it is not present in Gallus gallus nor in Gallus bankiva. It is however present in Ceylon and Grey Junglefowl. Sri Lanka ( once called Ceylon) was for several centuries, like Bali and Northern Western Sumatra, a veritable hub of a chicken breeding industry. Unique strains unique to each of these regions would generate the founder stock of the Bantams. These strains were founded by with females descended of Bankiva X Gallus founders. A significant percentage of the male founders of the original Bantams came from further afield.

Ayam Katek an archaic bantam breed descended of Ayam Katai fighting game e.g. Bankivoid and Thai maternal stock with Ceylon, Bankivoid and or Grey Sires.

Citation :

. Etymologically, the name bantam is derived from the city of Bantam, once a major seaport, in Indonesia. European sailors restocking on live fowl for sea journeys found the small native breeds of chicken in Southeast Asia to be useful, and any such small poultry came to be known as a bantam.

Most large chicken breeds have a bantam counterpart, sometimes referred to as a miniature. Miniatures are usually one-fifth to one-quarter the size of the standard breed, but they are expected to exhibit all of the standard breed's characteristics. A true bantam has no large counterpart, and is naturally small.

Bantam (Indonesian: Banten) in Banten province near the western end of Java was a strategically important site and formerly a major trading city, with a secure harbor on the Sunda Strait through which all ocean-going traffic passed, at the mouth of Cibanten River that provided a navigable passage for light craft into the island's interior which itself provides a good access to the hinterland.

As a trading city Bantam received an early influx of Islamic influence in the early 16th century. Bantam was the seat of a powerful sultanate. Later, the Portuguese and Dutch fought for control of Bantam in the 17th century. The English, who started to sail to the East Indies from around 1600, established a permanent trading post in Bantam in 1603. The Dutch found that they could control Batavia more thoroughly than Bantam, which contributed to its decline. South-Bantam or Bantan-Kidoel or Lebak was also the place where the main character Max Havelaar in Multatuli's novel Max Havelaar acted as the assistant-resident.

Today, Bantam is a small local seaport, economically overpowered by the neighbouring port of Merak. In Bantam, the Chinese are an important component of the community.

According to Nuclear DNA data the origin of the peacomb and both rumplessness and squirrel tail ( think Serama/Belgium Quail Bantam) is the Ceylon Junglefowl. The Grey Junglefowl and the Ceylon JF are difficult to distinguish on a molecular basis but the Peacomb and abbreviated spine of the Ceylon JF are dominant traits in its hybrids. Compellingly, crosses between Ceylon JF and domestic chickens are almost invariably sterile. This is not the case when a Ceylon JF is bred to a Bankivoid hen. The early bankivoid derived game breeds were more genetically compatible with the Ceylon Junglefowl male. According to Ghigi, female Ceylon JF do not produce viable embryos with Red JF even bankiva. When Ceylon JF were bred to bankivoid hens in Ghigi's experiments, they produced only a few fertile males and no fertile females.This follows Haldane's Rule:

Citation :

Haldane's rule relating to hybrids of species and extended to speciation in evolutionary theory is easily stated:

When in the offspring of two different animal races one sex is absent, rare, or sterile, that sex is the heterozygous (heterogametic) sex.

It was originally formulated in 1922 by the British evolutionary biologist J. B. S. Haldane. It is sometimes referred to as Haldane's law.

In many organisms, such as mammals or Drosophila flies, males are the heterogametic sex, in that they have XY sex chromosomes, whereas females are homogametic, with XX chromosomes. However, in some other animals (i.e. birds, butterflies) and plants, the reverse is usually true. Haldane's rule has been shown in a number of different hybrid crosses where either the male or the female is the heterogametic sex.

The fact that hybrid sterility and inviability can evolve due to Haldane's rule in such a vast array of different organisms is quite striking. However, the actual explanation of this phenomenon is rather complicated. Many different hypotheses have been advanced to explain the genetic basis of Haldane's rule.

* The dominance hypothesis: Heterogametic hybrids are affected by all, recessive and dominant, X-linked genes involved in incompatibilities, while homogametic hybrids are only affected by the dominant ones.
* Faster male hypothesis: Male genes evolve faster due to sexual selection.
* Meiotic drive: In hybrid populations, selfish genetic elements inactivate sperm cells (i.e: A X-linked drive factor inactivates a Y-bearing sperm and vice versa).
* Faster X theory: X-linked have a larger effect in reproductive isolation.

The dominance hypothesis is the most widely accepted explanation of Haldane's rule. However, the individual hypotheses are not mutually exclusive and many causes might potentially act together and cause hybrid sterility and inviability in the heterogametic sex. The faster male hypothesis, for example, receives support from a study in Asian Elephants.

Haldane's rule has a correspondence with the observation that some negative recessive genes are sex-linked and express themselves more often in men than women, such as color blindness or haemophilia.

Hybrids between Grey JF and Domestic Chickens are partially fertile with gametic problems arising in the f2 generation of fertile progeny which in turn, result in a larger percentage of fertile males than females.


Ceylon JF male, note the elongated plumes of the crown behind the comb.
The Ceylon sired progeny were unusual looking birds, often lacking a tail or exhibiting an unusually curved spine resulting in the squirrel tail. Another unusual trait was the absence of or modification of the comb in roosters and the presence of breast feathers with the same hue and pattern as the hackle. The Ceylon Junglefowl also exhibits special sub auricle plumage and red or yellow legs. The Ceylon Junglefowl is the only species of Gallus with elongated crown feathers. These plumes are obscured by the presence of the curious comb of the adult male but are more obvious in juvenile males. More prominently crested domestic breeds probably were derived of slightly crested bantams that originated in Ceylon, Bali and Sumatra. These valued roosters were fine fighters but their lack of fecundity resulted in very few progeny. The very few that did end up hatching were much prized and these birds were even more unusual than their hybrid fathers, for these birds often exhibited unusual plumage pigmentation and/or morphology. Leucistic sports in Ceylon JF are not uncommon in wild populations. A wild leucistic Ceylon JF ( itself most probably the result of a much abbreviated gene pool) may very likely have been more often than not, the sire of many a lineage. A leucistic Ceylon Junglefowl is unusual in that it still retains iridescence throughout its white body.
According to Ghigi, frizzle plumage is not uncommon in f2 hybrids between Ceylon sired hybrids and bankivoid hens. Another common mutation in the subsequent generations is yellow legs and white or piebald plumage. Double spurs have also been noted in the occasional wild Ceylon JF.
As these hybrids tend to be smaller than their parental species in size with each generation, the generation of the rumpless Wallikiki or Basket Fowl was integral for the development of Bantams. This genetic stock- the males at any rate, became the founders of Silky, Sumatran, Minohiki and other important breeds.



The Grey Junglefowl and Indian Red Junglefowl were sires in more recent centuries of fighting games native to India. These strains gave rise to both the Mediterranean and European egg and meat breeds. Their maternal ancestors were the domesticated Gallus, but their sires were a combination of Grey,Indian Red and Burmese Red Junglefowl.

You will be hard pressed to find a Fighting Game that does not have yellow legs.


The Firefox or Ayam Katai a cross between Grey , Ceylon and Bankivoid fighting game first developed during ancient times and widely transported during subsequent centuries for game fighting and flytying, is according to Nuclear DNA studies, one of the male founders of such diverse breeds as the Marans, Barnsvelder, Fayoumi and Yokahoma, the Seabright Bantam and the Belgium Quail Bantam.

Citation :

The Age of Discovery, also known as the Age of Exploration, was a period in human history starting in the 15th Century and continuing into the 17th Century, during which Europeans explored the world by ocean searching for trading partners and particular trade goods. The most desired trading goods were gold, silver and spices. Western Europeans used new sailing ship technologies, new maps, and advances in astronomy to seek a viable trade route to Asia for valuable spices which would be uncontested by Mediterranean powers. In terms of shipping advances, the most important developments were the creation of the carrack and caravel designs in Portugal. These vessels evolved from medieval European designs from the North Sea and both the Christian and Islamic Mediterranean. They were the first ships that could leave the relatively placid and calm Mediterranean, Baltic or North Sea and sail safely on the open Atlantic.

The original Marandaise ( ancestors of the Marans) and heirloom lineages of that breed, exhibit red legs which can only have been accrued from the Ceylon JF.
[/quote]

Sujet passionnant à traduire et lire !!! merci

superbe le lien du départ,

impréssionnnant de voir cette race à l'etat sauvage et qui a la capacité de pouvoir voler sur des centaine de metres

[quote="kermit"]
So we've covered some ground on the Lakenvelder and if you care to rewind your memory card a bit, you may recall that long before there was such a refined confectionery heirloom of a breed as a Lakenvelder, there was a fortress city in the Levant called Tel Megiddo which bridged Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley Civilization with the Mediterranean Sea and Egypt. Before there was such a breed as the Lakenvelder, the "Tel Megiddo Phase " at the foundation of the Lakenvelder's development underwent sufficient homogenization, that is, the vast majority of all the chickens living in the Levant at this period were exceedingly closely related. While they may not have been particularly tame or pretty, they bred true - in the sense that one of three or four phenotypic morphs were all that would hatch from each clutch and each morph could be bred to type for those that were so inclined. We must remember that use of the domestic fowl at this stage was largely ceremonial. Its rooster crow was considered at the time as its crowning achievement. Its propensity to stick around and entertain with all its antics and the beauty of the birds were not lost on the ancients either. If anything, people probably searched for excuses to keep their showy pets . The daily production of eggs was also fascinating and useful, but there simply were not enough chickens about, at this level of domestication, to jettison them to the indispensable category where they are today. Only the royal and religious classes were familiar with the domestic fowl at this point in time and history.

In order to understand the development of the Egyptian Fayoumi we have to rewind a fair bit, to revisit ancient Egypt and get a handle on a place known by archaeologists and world historians as the Egyptian Labyrinth. It was built quite a bit earlier than the development of the hills of Palestine which would eventually become the fortress of Tel-Megiddo. So we have to go back in time a few thousand years before the first chicken arrived even in the Levant - much less Egypt.
http://www.catchpenny.org/labyrin.html

Citation :

The Egyptian Labyrinth

The first recorded maze in history was the Egyptian Labyrinth. Herodotus, a Greek traveler and writer, visited the Egyptian Labyrinth in the 5th century, BC. The building was located just above Lake Moeris and opposite the city of the crocodiles (Crocodilopolis). Herodotus was very impressed by it, stating, "I found it greater than words could tell, for although the temple at Ephesus and that at Samos are celebrated works, yet all the works and buildings of the Greeks put together would certainly be inferior to this labyrinth as regards labor and expense." Herodotus added that even the pyramids were surpassed by the Egyptian Labyrinth.


Paul Lucas sketched this drawing of the remains of the Egyptian Labyrinth in 1700.
Herodotus was told that the land of Egypt had been divided into twelve kingdoms, or nomes, each ruled by a king. The kings had come together to leave a memorial of themselves through this temple which was called Arsino�, which means "the temple at the entrance of the lake." The entire building was surrounded by a wall and contained 12 courts with 3,000 chambers. The roof of the temple was composed of stone and the walls were covered with sculpture. On one side of the labyrinth was a pyramid 243 feet high. The temple was in two levels with half of the rooms above ground and the rest below. Herodotus was guided through the upper part of the labyrinth, but was not permitted to go underground. He was told that the rooms below contained the bodies of the kings that constructed the temple and the tombs of sacred crocodiles.

The ancient writer Pliny in his book "Natural History," written in the first century AD, also talks a little about this labyrinth. He noted that the labyrinth contained palaces and temples to all the gods of Egypt as well as "banquet halls reached by steep ascents, flights of ninety steps leading down from the porticoes, porphyritic columns, figures of gods and hideous monsters, and statues of kings." Pliny goes on to say, "Some of the palaces are so made that the opening of a door makes a terrifying sound as of thunder. Most of the buildings are in total darkness."

Little remains of this once-impressive structure today. In 1700 a European traveler named Paul Lucas visited the site and published an account of the remains, including sketches, as he saw them. Over a century later K.R. Lepsius led an expedition and uncovered a series of brick chambers which he identified as the labyrinth. The location was not definately determined until Professor Flinders Petrie explored the site in 1888. Petrie identified the wall found by Lepsius as the remains of a Roman town and then went on to find the foundation of the actual labyrinth which measured 1,000 feet long by 800 feet wide.
Archaeologists now believe that the temple was built by Amenemhat III around 4,000 years ago and the mummified remains of Amenemhat and his daughter have been found in the associated pyramid. The exact purpose of the building is still a matter of speculation, but one thing is for sure: it is the oldest-known structure to which the label labyrinth has been applied.

Bos indicus or Zebu Cattle originally from the Indus Civilization were introduced to Egypt at the same time as the Indus Phase domestic fowl. Subsequently, the Zebu Cattle were interbred with Egyptian Cattle whose wild ancestor was native to the Nile Valley and Eastern Sahara. The recombined stocks gave rise to the East African Cattle known as the Angkole and Watusi Cattle. Ancient Egyptian art reveals that the arrival of the Indus Valley Cattle coincides with the New Kingdom which like the introduction of the domestic fowl to Egypt, occurred during the 18th Dynasty. .
The Egyptian Fayoumi is like the Lakenvelder, an ancient breed derived of the Indus Lineage stock. The Tel Megiddo and the Egyptian Fayoumi split from the same family branch somewhere between ~ 1425 and 1397 BC. which is approximately three thousand, five hundred years ago.
Their common ancestral heirloom lineage, which will be referred to here as, "Indus Phase" was refined durings it short stop over in Mesopotamia (Ur) before its eventual transmigration to Palestine . Once in Palestine, this stock underwent several levels of refinement in the Tel Megiddo ( Har Megiddo) region. Here in these fortressed valleys, the Indus Heirloom lineage and root stock of the domestic fowl was maintained to the exclusion of all other domestic chicken breeds. No other breeds had yet to be developed in this part of the world. The Egyptian Fayoumi was developed from one phase of the Indus Lineage which was relatively primitive ( " early Tel Megiddo phase) whilst the Lakenvelder and other Mediterranean breeds were bred from a much more refined phase of the same stock ( final Tel Megiddo phase), many centuries later.
We know from the annals of history that greatly esteemed roosters and hens of this early "Tel Megiddo phase" of the Indus lineage were presented as tribute to King Thutmose III during the mid 18th Dynasty ( 14th Century BCE). As the Egyptians had never before seen a chicken, it was met with no little fanfare. Subsequent to its arrival in Egypt, this Tel Megiddo Phase stock of the Indus Lineage fowl underwent yet another transformative and uniquely African phase. The Egyptian chapter culminates with the development and refinement of our beloved Egyptian Fayoumi, which is one if not the most important egg producing breeds in all of Africa. This is the first and only breed that was developed primarily on the African continent. Many people fail to realize that Egypt is on the African continent.
So how did we get to the Fayoumi and how does it differ from the Lakenvelder -and while we are at it- how does it differ from the Campine?
Let's get down to brass tacks with the naturalization of Gallus domesticus in Egypt.
As the ancients lacked proper chicken coops, or aviaries, these newly imported curiosities- were released into the high walled gardens and sacred groves surrounding the Egyptian labyrinth, which sprawled across many miles in the Fayoum Oasis/marshlands. Due to the primitive state of the stock, that is, they were not all that domesticated to begin with, these semi-domestic flocks quickly went feral, as chickens are prone to do when given the opportunity. With each generation, they further reverted to wild type eking out a survival in the wild marshes and thorn forests where the birds quickly became naturalized as a feral species. This reversal in terms of domestication, the chickens of Fayoum Oasis were reverting to the wild as opposed to becoming more domesticated, more essentially useful to human kind, this was happening for two major reasons.
1. the religious caste of Egyptian priests who were the stewards of the Egyptian Labyrinth were strictly vegetarian, eating neither fat, nor flesh, eggs or fish. They had no active participation in the development of the Fayoum chicken, save for protecting them against poachers and predators and providing them with sanctuary and food, which were essentially the same things the high religious caste of the Indus Valley had done for their first semi-domestic cattle and fowl a few chapters earlier.
2. The first Fayoum fowl were skittish and wild to begin with. Their male ancestors were largely Grey Junglefowl hybrids. The thorny marshes and palm groves of Fayoum were ideal habitats for those individuals with Grey Junglefowl instincts and survivability skills. Native predators helped sculpt the reversal the rest of the way. It wasn't until Cleopatra's Greco-Roman era, nearly a thousand years later, that the wild fowl of the Fayoum Oasis were captured up and re domesticated as it were. Im skipping ahead a bit so let me keep editing this for clarity without further confusing the chapters in history.

To reiterate once again, the original stock that gave rise to the modern Fayoumi was, at the time of their introduction to Egyptian, still fairly close to the Indus Valley phase and this means that while they came from Tel Megiddo in the Levant, they had not yet reached the level of development in domestication that the last few incarnations of the Tel Megiddo lineage would, before being carried across the Mediterranean and into Europe to become the basis of each and every one of the layer breeds.
The only individuals that survived to reproduce and indeed did breed successfully, were capable of flight and self survival; they resisted periods of drought and knew how to hide their eggs. In other words, when King Thutmose III was sent a few dozen chickens from Tel Megiddo during the mid 18th Dynasty, the birds were not as domesticated and thoroughly homogenized as the stock that would be carried out of Palestine during the Roman era during the era of the birth of Christ. If you can intuit history for a moment- the chickens scratching about in Bethlehem the day Christ was born, these would have been the last Tel Megiddo Phase- which immediately precedes the introduction of the domestic fowl to the Mediterranean and Europe. During the early Tel Megiddo Phase, nearly 2000 years before the birth of Christ, Gallus domesticus in the Levant = and these were the only chickens in the Near East at that time, were barely domesticated- closely bred because of the very small founder pool of their progenitors- but nevertheless, only a few stages from being wild junglefowl.
At the time of their arrival in Egypt during the mid 18th Dynasty, during the early Tel Megiddo phase, they would have been similar in size and shape, to the Red Junglefowl, perhaps a bit larger, with just a few telltale traits that would set them apart from that wild species.

Something that likely distinguished this stock from the Red Junglefowl progenitors-would have been the markings of the females, which may well have been patterned slightly differently than a typical Red Junglefowl because of the Grey Junglefowl sires in their ancestry. Grey Junglefowl females are camouflaged in exceedingly dry evergreen hill forest. Red Junglefowl females are camouflaged for life in tropical deciduous forest. The Grey Junglefowl female's dorsal plumage is strikingly marked with vivid pale centers to each feather- the breast is even more boldly patterned in highly contrasting white and black markings which serve to conceal her while perched in the thorn forest. The Red Junglefowl female lacks any striking demarcations in her plumage as she lives in moister understorey where the leaf litter is deep and she only need merge with the forest floor to be concealed. In other words, the females of the early Tel Megiddo phase probably closely resembled a Modern Game.