History of turkeys: Wild turkeys
When did turkeys evolve?
Turkeys evolved from earlier birds. The ancestors of the turkey evolved about 100 million years ago, from the dinosaurs that were alive at that time.
More about dinosaurs
When did birds evolve?
Native American environment
All our Native articles
Are turkeys related to chickens?
By about 11 million years ago, turkeys had evolved to be different from pheasants. Turkeys are related to chickens, but wild chickens lived mainly in East Asia, while wild turkeys lived in North America and Central America.
History of chickens
East Asian environment
Why are turkeys so much bigger?
Like chickens, turkeys are mainly running birds that can only fly a little bit. Turkeys started out small, like pheasants, but at some point they migrated south to Central America, where there were no animals that hunted turkeys. It was so safe and peaceful that turkeys could grow bigger and bigger. They didn’t need to be able to fly much.
Olmec clay image of a turkey, about 700 BC (Thanks to Steffan Ziegler)
Who domesticated turkeys?
Around 800 BC, Olmec farmers in what is now southern Mexico domesticated turkeys, which they called “huexolotl”. Soon Olmec people were eating a lot of turkey meat and turkey eggs. Olmec people also used turkey feathers to make beautiful feather capes and feather necklaces.
Who were the Olmec?
And the Maya?
History of eggs
Soon the Olmecs’ neighbors, like the Maya, also began to breed turkeys and eat them.
Pueblo people domesticate turkeys
Then maybe around 200 BC, Pueblo farmers in what is now Arizona and New Mexico independently domesticated a slightly different kind of turkey. Again, the Pueblo people used turkeys mainly to make capes and blankets from their feathers.
Pueblo history
Who were the Mississippians?
Bows and arrows
They also used turkey bones as musical instruments and tools. Further east, the Mississippians also ate turkeys, but they hunted wild turkeys with bows and arrows instead of raising turkeys on farms. (Some archaeologists think they might have raised turkeys too.)
Aztec feather shield (ca. 1520 AD), now in Vienna
By 1100 AD, the Pueblo people began to also use turkeys as an important source of meat and eggs, like their Aztec neighbors to the south in Mexico.
Turkeys come to Europe
Around 1500 AD, the first Spanish invaders came to the Aztec empire in Mexico and found turkeys there. They brought some turkeys back to Spain, and from Spain some turkeys came to other parts of Europe.
Why do we eat turkeys for holidays?
In Europe, people thought of turkeys as an expensive luxury food for rich people. That’s why we eat turkeys on special occasions like Thanksgiving and Christmas (even though turkeys aren’t really expensive anymore). The history of turkeys leads us to think they are fancy.
History of Thanksgiving
History of Christmas
Why do we call them turkeys?
When English invaders first came to eastern North America in the 1500s AD and saw turkeys, they thought turkeys were the same as a related bird that did come from the country Turkey, so they called these birds turkeys. Even when English scientists finally realized that American turkeys were a different type of bird, the name stuck.
Learn by doing: a project with feathers
More about Central American food
Bibliography and further reading about the history of turkeys:
Chicks & Chickens, by Gail Gibbons (2003). Explains where chickens come from, and what they eat, and so on. For younger kids.
A Chicken in Every Pot: Global Recipes for the World’s Most Popular Bird, by Kate Heyhoe (2003). Includes a brief history, and lots of recipes for chicken.
Much Depends on Dinner: The Extraordinary History and Mythology, Allure and Obsessions, Perils and Taboos, of an Ordinary Meal, by Margaret Visser (1999). Background on what you eat, including a chapter on chicken.
Food in Antiquity: A Survey of the Diet of Early Peoples, by Don and Patricia Brothwell (1998). Pretty specialized, but the book tells you where foods came from, and how they got to other places, and what people ate in antiquity. Not just Europe, either!
Stop running down white people because they settled here. I do not see anyone objecting to more and more people coming here nor do I see anyone wanting to give up their place and move back “home”. Give it a rest ok. I do not see the Indians going back to the bow, arrow and clubs to eek out a existence either.
You have a mistaken idea of how Native Americans lived. And Native people absolutely still object to being forced off their land without fair compensation. Also, you are trying to tell me what to do; I can make my own decisions without your help.
The English came as settlers in the 1500s, not invaders.
The English may have thought of themselves as settlers, but they knew very well that America was not uninhabited; people already controlled that land; people who had fought wars and drawn up treaties over who owned that land. The English knew that they were pushing people off that land, and killing them if they fought back. “Settlers” makes it sound peaceful, as if they had been invited.
Let’s not forget that this pattern happened over and over again in every continent for many millennia. It is only modern sensibilities that make it seem cruel. In not saying that the modern sensibilities are wrong. We need to let go of the wrongs committed by our ancestors and focus more on the many wrongs still being committed today. I think we have our hands full.
It is not only modern sensibilities that make invasions, killing people, and pushing them off their land seem cruel. It is cruel, and Native Americans and other indigenous people certainly felt it was cruel at the time. So did many Europeans; some of them objected, and some of them just didn’t mind being cruel to other people. Those wrongs are not so long ago – the last Native people lost their land about 1900 – and white people are still benefiting from their theft today.