>>13588290lazy fuck. No wonder a handful of hicks kicked you out.
British anthropologist Mary Douglas, in her 1966 book “Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo,” explains the prohibition as a problem of taxonomy: The pig did not fit conveniently into the Israelites’ definitions of what a domestic animal should be (the cloven hooves, the failure to chew their cuds like cows). Animals like pigs that cross over definitions, Douglas argues, that crawl instead of walk or swarm instead of fly, defied the tribal need to create an intellectual ordering of the world. Disorder of any kind, Douglas writes, provided a frightening glimpse into the chaos inherent in the universe.
Later, another anthropologist, Marvin Harris, gave a decidedly utilitarian explanation for the taboo against pork, arguing in his 1974 book “Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches: The Riddles of Culture” that the prohibition was a response to the realities of nomadic life in the arid stretches of Palestine.
Harris points out that the pig does indeed wallow in its own filth and eats its own feces, but usually only under conditions of severe drought. Cows and sheep will also eat their own feces under extremely dry conditions, he adds.
But pigs require larger amounts of moisture than cows or sheep, he says, and are therefore difficult to raise in hot, dry climates: It was easier, in the end, to forbid people to eat something that they might long for. “Better then, to interdict the consumption of pork entirely,” Harris writes, “and to concentrate on raising goats, sheep and cattle. Pigs tasted good, but it was too expensive to feed them and keep them cool.”
