New genetic evidence: chickens came to the Americas with the Polynesians

Genetic evidence strongly points to the first chickens arriving in the new world a hundred years before Columbus “discovered” an already-populated continent.

The key finding emerged from ancient DNA extracted from one of the chicken bones.

“Being that these are the only pre-Columbian chicken bones that are known, they are very valuable,” said lead author Alice Storey of the University of Auckland in New Zealand.

With that in mind, the team started with just one bone, which they broke apart to extract the remaining DNA.

They compared this chicken’s DNA with the DNA of ancient chickens from archaeological sites across Polynesia and Southeast Asia.

The results show that the chicken was from Polynesian stock, since it had genetic mutations not seen in chickens brought to the Americas by the Europeans.

Ah, science. They also did some cool dating on the chicken bones to confirm when they had been buried–evidence which was in line with other findings at the site.

Now my question is this: given genetic evidence that demonstrates where this chicken was from, how do Creationists continue to pretend that natural selection does not explain biological diversity? Some of them will say that evolution can occur within “kinds”–a word with no precise meaning–but they can’t explain how evolution can serve to make chicken populations genetically distinct across continents yet cannot accumulate changes to create new species.

Science kicks ignorance’s ass again, and as usual the truth is far more compelling than the lies we choose to believe.

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