Modern dinner-table turkeys are descended from birds first domesticated 2,700 years in Mesoamerica, and bred with sophistication by the Aztecs. But they weren’t the only turkey tamers: Indigenous inhabitants of what became the southwestern United States had their own prize breeds, now lost to posterity.
Until now, it was assumed that all domesticated turkeys could be traced to the Aztec-bred lineage. However, a genetic analysis of bones and droppings at 38 archaeological sites in the southwestern U.S. shows that the birds there belonged to a distinctly different subspecies.
According to the findings, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that single turkey breed prevailed for more than a millennia among the southwest’s natives. But even as turkey husbandry reached its height among the Anasazi and Mogollon and Salado, the local birds’ doom had already begun.
In the 15th century, Spanish Conquistadors took Aztec turkeys back to Europe. The birds proved popular, and were cross-bred and refined before being reintroduced to North America by colonial settlers in the 17th century. The settlers’ birds were carried westward as part of the same historical wave that obliterated native southwestern culture.
The colonial turkeys ultimately became, in highly modified form, the industrial gargantuans of Thanksgiving fame. As for native southwestern turkeys, a handful of genes from a few escapees linger in existing wild birds, but the originals are gone.
“We have no genetic evidence that these breeds survived into the present day,” said study co-author Dongya Yang, a Simon Fraser University archaeologist. But historically-inclined foodies may have better luck finding pure-blooded descendants of the Aztec birds. “It is quite likely that the indigenous Mesoamerican turkey breeds still survive in rural Mexico,” said Yang.
Images: 1. Detail from Mimbres pottery bowl, circa AD 1000-1200, from Eric Kaldahl/Amerind Foundation 2. A network representation of the genetic relationships between North American wild and domestic turkeys/PNAS. Southwestern turkeys are the gray circles; modern commercial turkeys occupy the tiny, mostly-white mHap1 circle on the left.
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Citation: “Ancient mitochondrial DNAanalysis reveals complexity of indigenous North American turkey domestication.” By Camilla F. Speller, Brian M. Kemp, Scott D. Wyatt, Cara Monroe, William D. Lipe, Ursula M. Arndt, and Dongya Y. Yanga. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 107 No. 5, February 2, 2010.Go Back to Top. Skip To: Start of Article.