On Monday, Jun 21, 2004, at 09:30 Asia/Tokyo, ginny wilken wrote:

> You have to wonder if hunters plucked their birds or just peeled them.

Depends on how much time they had, and how hungry they were, I suppose.
I usually just peeled them, when I did chickens, it is so much easier
and quicker, and I never liked the taste of chicken skin much. Lots of
fat and energy there though, so I guess if I was short of food I would
pluck them. Feathers are a useful resource too.
>
>
>> Did they even have "chickens" back then, or are chickens bred from
>> some other
>> bird that
>> doesn't really exist anymore?
>
> They're probably one of the oldest animals to be domesticated, and have
> gone through a lot of changes. But there are certainly ground-based
> partridges which are genetically close. I'd like to know definitively
> also.

Modern-day fighting cocks are not too different from the wild stock, I
understand. There are wild chickens in the asian jungles. Pheasants are
pretty closely related too.