Chickens from Outer Space? The Strange Case of South American Chickens

About 9000 years ago, somebody in East Asia domesticated the chicken. Every chicken alive today is descended from the East Asian jungle fowl. Not only are South American chickens very strange birds, but they’ve been in South America way too long. When the Spanish first arrived in South America they noted the fact that there were already chickens there! In 1590 Father Acosta published a book entitled “Historia Natural y Moral de las Indias” and in that book he lists the Quechua words for a variety of animals.  It is natural the Inca would have used the Spanish name for animals introduced by the Spanish since they had never seen those animals before and had no name for them.  So, in Quechua, horse is kawella (Spanish for horse is caballo); cow is waca (Spanish for cow is vaca); and sheep is oweja (Spanish for sheep is oveja).  See the similarity?  Then we look at chicken related words – Quechua words for hen, rooster, and egg are achawal, alkaachawal, and runtu, respectively.  Which are nothing at all like the Spanish words naming the same things, gallina, gallo, and huevo.  Which suggests that hens, roosters, and eggs were already known to the Inca before the Spanish arrived.