. . .

Plural Introductions?

We seem rather quickly to assume that we are dealing with single contacts and one transfer of a trait. In the chicken case, we have hints that we may have had plural introductions. Note, for instance, the Japanese name among the Tarahumar and the Hindu names among the Arawak and the Guaymi. Note also that there seem to be two of three Asiatic varieties—naked-necked, rumples, melanotic, frizzled, silky, peacombed, feather-puffed-in various combinations. Although these could have come in one mixed lot, we have a curious hint from Easter Island that varieties of chickens arrived there sequentially, for Metraux (1940: 90) records, “Finally, white fowl-hitherto unknown—began to multiply.” Chickens clearly arrived at this outpost in the Pacific in a sequence, and the varietal differences record this sequence. Although the Spanish surely introduced chickens, they may only have been adding complexity to an already varied set of Asiatic fowl. The plurality of names and plurality of races of fowl in South America is more suggestive of multiple introductions and antiquity than single introductions and recency; and, as we have seen, the chicken does not stand alone. In the field of ethnobotany there are plants shared by Oceania and America with comparable, similar names. As Sorenson (this symposium) shows, the list of parallels in general cultural anthropology is enormous.

. . .