Much to the surprise of common folks, it is not chicken but geese that were the first birds to be domesticated by humankind and that too thousands of years ago, according to Michael Marshall of New Scientist.

In a new study, as per a report in smithsonianmag.com, researchers from the institutions of Japan and China came across such bones and they studied 232 of these that had been located in a site in east China called Tianluoshan. This region had been inhabited by hunters and gatherers of Stone Age and farmers of rice from 7,000 and 5,500 years ago.

The bones were dated to 5000 BCE after the radiocarbon test was carried out and it discovered that these were domesticated fowl.

As per the details of this study that have been published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, among the bones there were four which belonged to goslings whose age ranged between eight and 16 weeks, thus too small to fly to any distance. Further as this region does not have any geese breed at present, the scientists feel that it was highly unlikely that there would have been around 7,000 years ago. This led to the deduction that the goslings had been conceived there. What clinches the argument is that the bones of the adult geese suggest local breeding since the chemical components of their bones mirror the same source of water and also that the birds were almost of the same size.

Sharing their views about this study, its researchers wrote: “It is possible that geese were bred to compensate for the reduced number of available birds from spring to autumn. Butchering and manufacturing marks were found on the goose bones, suggesting that both locally bred and wild geese provided meat and raw materials for bone tools, such as awls, needle holders, and other instruments.”

What is significant about this study and the findings is that it now proposes that geese were the first birds to be tamed in the world which means that it was even before chickens. It may be pertinent to note that research done on DNA of a chicken bone in 2014 did put forward the theory that these birds were tamed around 10,000 years ago in China but the deductions of this study have been disputed. New Scientists stated that the conclusive proof which proves chicken domestication dates back to 5,000 years.

Zooarchaeologist Ophélie Lebrasseur of France’s Centre for Anthropobiology and Genomics of Toulouse told New Scientist: “It’s a major study in our understanding of poultry domestication. They’ve been very thorough.”

Lebrasseur was not part of the study.

It may be noted that goose meat has been eaten in China for a long time and even today it is the largest producer of this meat. Farming in this region contributes to 90 per cent of the goose population on the earth.

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