You didn’t read the study fully. It’s not using the jungles of Thailand as the only example - it also looks at situations in Northeastern Africa, in modern China, etc…

I'm aware and did read the study, thanks.

That handles about half of your argument where you argue that it only works for that specific environment, it doesn’t,

When on earth did I say that?

it is observed in every historical environment where suitable grains were being grown.

Incorrect. What the authors actually say is that chickens coincide with the spread of Asian crops, particularly rice. i.e., this follows a pattern of agricultural trade and sharing of practices.

There are many, many places that developed and grew grains without chickens. Nearly all of them, in fact.

There is no reason to have a just-so story.

There are many reasons to have just-so stories. I already pointed to a particularly pernicious one, which is the widespread western chauvinist tradition of justifying current practices, and especially eurocentric practices, as a natural and historical outcome. There does not need to be a direct material interest in the authors doing so, though there always is one: you can get published more easily and with less work if you more or less support this kind of thinking. It doesn't need to be intentional, either. The lathe of capitalist academia will take true believers and cynics alike.

Academics tell just-so stories all the time. Our comrade Stephen Jay Gould wrote about this extensively regarding evolutionary theory, whereas the vast majority of scientists in the field were retelling the same stories, and usually because they actually believe them and actually internalize those thought processes.

The article actually does consider the hypothesis that chickens merely stumbled into cereal-growing places, but that’s just a question of how it started. It doesn’t explain why people continued to engage in very deliberate husbandry for thousands of years. I suggest you completely read the paper if you’re interested.

Thank you for the condescension.

It also addresses the fact that, yes, Europe was not a place where this was a factor. Instead, other animals (notably pigs) filled this niche in a way that more synergistic with the crops and practices of the time and place.

Maybe. Or maybe not. Maybe pigs were just, you know, already there. And were first part of hunting cultures. Etc etc. It is best to question simplistic narratives that are mostly making guesses based on coincidence. Various parts of Europe, of course, did eventually start using chickens as well.

As far as the point about global poverty, you’re just coming back to my original point. If you believe that the way forwards is industrial agriculture (I do too), then yes of course animal husbandry doesn’t have a point in terms of efficiency, as I said before.

It wasn't clear to me that this was your position. However, my point about global poverty is about modern conditions not mirroring those of neolithic Thailand, or really any of the places and times in the article, but instead reflecting modem capitalism. A similar tool is involved (animal ag as food technology), but of course even that is different due to artificial selection.

It’s an okay point of view that, no, we don’t need to have industrialized and mechanized agriculture everywhere, and we can have modernized small-scale farming, in which case having animals such as chickens can be efficient.

Efficient in what way?

There is a difference between something being necessary because you are destitute and something being efficient because it allows you to get more out of your resources - it could feasibly fall onto the latter.

Is this what you mean by efficient? Due to trophic levels and the energetic expense of entire birds, I'd say you're using a lower technology for no good reason when you could just mulch or otherwise process your waste more efficiently.