On the brink of extinction three centuries after the first Thanksgiving, the wild turkey is flourishing again.

Fifteen hundred years before Columbus sailed for the New World, at about the time of the birth of Christ, American Indians living in Mexico domesticated the continent's only major contribution to the livestock industry: the turkey. The domestic turkey was later taken to Spain along with other treasures from the Western world. Turkeys, therefore, were well known in Europe by the time the Pilgrims in Massachusetts celebrated the first Thanksgiving.