Scientists: turkeys were not domesticated for food, but as satellites in the "land of the dead"

The turkeys were domesticated in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, where they were not initially used for food, but were bred only for ritual purposes.

Long before turkeys became a traditional dish of American Thanksgiving and some of the world's favorite club sandwiches, they were popular with the dead civilizations of the Mayans and the Aztecs. The evidence of the time was explored by Aurélie Manin of the University of York and her colleagues, whose article is published by the journal Royal Society Open Science.

The authors studied the remains of 55 turkeys, found in Mesoamerica and dated from 300 to 1500 years BC. According to them, the increased breeding of these birds was in no way connected with the growth of the population of the region. Virtually none of them carry traces of cooking - apparently, they did not eat them.

"Some were found buried in temples or in graves in the neighborhood of people, perhaps as escorts in a posthumous journey," says Aurelia Manin. "This is consistent with the iconography of the time known to us, where turkeys are often depicted in the same way as gods, and act as one of the symbols in the ancient calendar."