Of all of humanity's great achievements and monuments, the legacy we leave behind might amount to nothing more than millions of chicken bones.
Corey Watson/UnsplashChicken wings, the potential legacy of humanity.
In Ernest Becker’s landmark 1973 philosophical work The Denial of Death, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author asserts that we as humans strive to leave some sort of significant legacy behind us. We want to ensure that our symbolic or spiritual self lives on beyond death.
Ancient civilizations have certainly done so, sometimes unintentionally. Monuments such as the Pyramids of Giza and Stonehenge are living reminders of the past, and religious practices like mummification have preserved our ancestors in time. Perhaps, like something out of a sci-fi movie, aliens will land on Earth long after humanity has passed to find massive cities, monuments to humanity’s heroes, or even something as simple as a person’s diary.
Well, as it turns out, humanity’s legacy could wind up being nothing more than what we’ve eaten. Specifically, chicken bones.
That may seem bleak — or beak, if you’ll allow the pun — but it’s not entirely baseless. Humanity more than any other species on Earth has had a profound impact on the planet. One thing that has remained remarkably consistent since prehistory, however, is the human diet. And as the human population grew well into the billions, the scale of production for our diets has likewise had to grow.
Chicken may not be the most widely consumed meat in the world — that would be pork — but since we’re largely leaving the bones untouched, a whole lot of them have been littered across the planet. One day, they might be the single greatest marker of mankind.
The Anthropocene And The Effects Of Humankind On Earth
Wikimedia CommonsLights from Earth’s cities as seen from orbit.
According to Smithsonian, some experts have asserted that human civilization is currently in an era they have dubbed the “Anthropocene,” a term that essentially describes the unprecedented influence humans have on the planet.
The term itself is still technically just a proposal, not necessarily widely adopted as a geological epoch. It was popularized, however, by the atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen around the year 2000. In simple terms, the term suggests that humanity has fundamentally altered the planet’s geological and ecological process to such an extent that it is worthy of being a distinct, new chapter in Earth’s history.
Wikimedia CommonsA chart showing the distribution of the world’s land mammals over time.
Key characteristics that define the Anthropocene include widespread changes to the atmosphere, mass extinctions of species, altered landscapes through urbanization and agriculture, ocean acidification, and the creation of new materials like plastics and concrete that will persist in the geological record.
Even among those who use the term, though, there is some debate about when it began, with some suggesting the start as the Agricultural Revolution around 10,000 years ago and others pointing to the Industrial Revolution in the late 1700s or more recently, post-World War II. Regardless, it’s hard to deny humanity’s impact on the planet, even just considering the past 80 years or so.
Because of this influence, once the human civilization eventually vanishes, there will still remain significant footprints that mark our existence in history. And a 2018 study claimed that the largest, most significant footprint that humans will leave behind is a ton of chicken bones.
People Are Eating More And More Chicken Each Year
Ozkan Guner/UnsplashAround 50 billion chickens are consumed each year.
The study, published in Royal Society Open Science, posited that the remains of domesticated chickens will be a major marker of our civilization, simply because there are just so many of them.
There are currently more than 22.7 billion domesticated chickens to date, and they far outnumber any other species of bird currently living. They’re actually the most numerous vertebrate species on land at any given time, outnumbering even the human population by three times.
More than 65 billion chickens were slaughtered in 2016 alone to accommodate our apparent insatiability for the bird, and that rate of chicken consumption is only increasing. If this pattern of consumption continues, chicken is on track to becoming the world’s most consumed meat, beating out the current number one: pork.
As Vox reported in 2021, the American diet is particularly reliant on chicken, and that’s been a steady increase since around 1970. A large reason for that is the industrialization of poultry production and how much easier that has proven to be compared to beef or pork.
Wikimedia Commons
Chickens grown in these factory-like facilities are also specially bred to grow faster, but that also causes them to be incapable of living life normally. They spend their lives in cages, with bodies too big for their joints, to be slaughtered and fed to millions upon millions of people. Consider, too, that a single pig or cow has substantially more meat and could feed more people — and would also leave behind fewer bones.
But the role of chicken in our diet isn’t just because it tastes good. After all, people would say beef and pork products taste good, too. An increasing awareness about the health concerns regarding red meat and cholesterol also played a role in the surge of chicken-centric meals.
Of course, cost plays a role, too.
All of these factors can explain why there are so many chicken bones on Earth, but they don’t necessarily explain why that would be humanity’s legacy. After all, unless they’re somehow preserved, bones don’t typically stick around forever. It takes longer than soft tissue, but bones do decompose — except, some researchers argue, modern chicken bones might not.
Why Experts Believe That Humanity’s Legacy May Be Chicken Bones
Chickens that are consumed today have evolved a specific skeletal structure unique to the modern human era.
Researchers compared the bones of these modern birds to that of their ancestors and concluded that the chicken bones of today will undoubtedly become fossilized as a representation of when humans dominated planet Earth. But why?
Levi T./UnsplashThe number of chickens on Earth triples the number of people.
While most wild bird bones are prone to decay, chicken bones are often discarded in landfills. When bones are surrounded by organic material, they are better preserved. The researchers say that these bones will then be mummified, which is why lead study author Carys E. Bennett asserts that chickens are “a potential future fossil of this age.”
So while humankind has certainly created a multitude of significant advancements and discoveries over the course of 300,000 years and counting, when all is said and done, it looks as though the only legacy that humans will leave behind is evidence of our fried chicken addiction.
Next, check out these 5 long lost civilizations. Then, read about this new theory that might solve the mystery of why the Mayan civilization disappeared.
