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+--- Thread: Article On the origin of the pork taboo (/thread-17393.html)
On the origin of the pork taboo - C C - Feb 15, 2025
https://archaeology.org/issues/march-april-2025/letters-from/on-the-origin-of-the-pork-taboo/
EXCERPTS: Thousands of clay tablets uncovered across Mesopotamia show that scribes gave short shrift to an animal that was difficult to tax. And excavations reveal that those living in wealthy households, palaces, and temples came to prefer mutton and beef, likely reflecting pork’s lowly reputation. Ruminants also provided lucrative secondary products including milk and wool, which became economic mainstays for better-off residents of these first cities.
The Hittites, who ruled over Anatolia from around 1600 to 1200 b.c., are known to have commonly sacrificed pigs in ritual acts. As the Bronze Age progressed, however, swine were gradually excluded from rituals across the region, and pork consumption dropped. By 1600 b.c., less than one in 20 bones found at sites in the Levant typically come from pigs, and most of those appear to be wild boars that were hunted.
At the dawn of the Iron Age, some 500 years later, pig-rearing had virtually ceased. “There’s no sign of a sudden taboo, disease, or environmental change,” says Price. “What is clear is that sheep, goats, and cattle took over.”
Price suspects that a host of factors contributed to this gradual decline, including more frequent droughts, loss of nut-bearing forests, and the rise of the wool and milk-product trade. “Pigs lost their status,” Price says, as they were increasingly seen as scavengers with an insatiable appetite for food and sex. The stage was set for a more widespread and all-encompassing taboo.
[...] At the start of the Iron Age, the story of the pig in the Near East takes a surprising turn. Archaeologists have detected an uptick in pork consumption in the region around 1000 b.c. This was about the time that the Israelites conquered Jerusalem by defeating a local Canaanite tribe and made it the capital of what became known as Judea...
[...] Even Judeans, who scholars had assumed avoided pork, weren’t, it seems, immune to the lure of a pig roast. [...] Rosenblum argues that the pig taboo only gained special status with the invasion of the Levant by the forces of the Macedonian ruler Alexander the Great in 332 b.c. These European conquerors enjoyed their pork, and pig consumption in the Levant soared.
[...] ... Rosenblum cites a story from the Second Book of Maccabees, which dates to the second century b.c. in which a group of Judeans forced by Hellenistic officials to eat pork chose martyrdom instead. He says that such tales underscore how the prohibition against eating pork emerged as a symbol of political and religious identity. ... The Hellenistic kingdoms collapsed in the first century b.c., only to be replaced by the Romans, whose enjoyment of pork repasts was even greater than the Greeks’...
[...] Archaeological evidence shows that people continued to eat more and more swine in the southern Levant in the first few centuries a.d., returning to levels not seen since the early Bronze Age. By this time, followers of the nascent Christian religion had rejected Jewish dietary restrictions, in part to attract non-Jewish followers...
[...] Although pork consumption declined with the rise of Islam, it never stopped completely. Despite climate change, shifting food fashions, and outright religious bans, people in the Middle East have been raising pigs for at least 10,000 years. In today’s Israel, Palestinian Christians continue to enjoy pork barbecues... (MORE - missing details)
RE: On the origin of the pork taboo - Magical Realist - Feb 15, 2025
I used to belong to a church that forbade all porcine delicacies. Claimed it would cause trichinosis. Like their Hebrew predecessors, I guess they never fully grasped the reliable anti-parasitical powers of a good roasting.