If you time-warped a few Pilgrims to your Thanksgiving table, they'd probably accuse you of being a witch.
But they'd recognize a lot of the food, just bigger, better, and tastier versions of what they ate.
Many traditional Thanksgiving foods are scienced up versions of native New World species.
What may surprise you is that before DNA, genetics, or Europeans showed up, the original residents of the Americas had already been molding these foods for thousands of years, turning the wild and barely-edible into domesticated deliciousness.
Despite the name, the turkey is from here.
Ben Franklin preferred the gobbler over the eagle for America's national bird, it was (in his words) "a true original Native of America".
Today, most of us can't tell a snood from a caruncle, but turkeys were hugely important to many early American cultures.
In fact along with dogs, llamas, alpacas, and guinea pigs, turkeys are one of the few domesticated animals native to the Americas.
Ancient trash dug up by archaeologists tells us about two thousand years ago a few Native American cultures realized breeding birds in captivity is easier than chasing them through the forest.
Luckily those birds pooped a lot, and old poop is one of an archaeologist's favorite things.
