While archaeologists can’t yet answer that question with certainty, they have discovered evidence of large-scale commercial chicken farming in ancient Judea during the 4th century BCE—some 200 years before the practice is thought to have reached Europe. Daniel Eisenbud writes:
“The [development of commercial chicken farming] was sharp and fast, and, within a few decades, chickens were [being raised] throughout the Middle East. It seems residents cultivated a new breed of rooster particularly suitable for commercial growth” [according to researchers at the University of Haifa]. The researchers said the findings shed new light on the beginnings of the economic exploitation of chickens, [helping to trace] its rise from the Mediterranean to Europe.
“Hundreds of years of gradual acclimatization of roosters in the southern Mediterranean Levant, along with the gradual adoption of this animal in the Middle Eastern economy, probably created a strain of rooster suitable for economic exploitation,” the researchers concluded. . . .
Chickens were first raised in the Far East and Southeast Asia 8,000 years ago, reaching the Middle East in small pockets 5,000 years later. At that time, the researchers said, the animals were considered exotic, and were primarily used for worship and cockfights.
Read more on Jerusalem Post: http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Culture/Chickens-first-commercialized-in-Israel-2300-years-ago-researchers-say-409671