# What was a herd of swine doing in Israel in Jesus' day?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-a-herd-of-swine-doing-in-israel-in-jesus-day/626330
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [June 26, 2012, 7:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-a-herd-of-swine-doing-in-israel-in-jesus-day/626330 "2012-06-26T07:14:56Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 4
### Author:  [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)
#### Post date: [June 27, 2012, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-a-herd-of-swine-doing-in-israel-in-jesus-day/626330/61 "2012-06-27T15:23:28Z")
> [@Acsenray](#):
>
> The treatment of horses in Canada is simply inherited from its socio-cultural history and there have been no environmental or economic pressures that would change it. That’s really the same as the deal in the United States. Horses no longer have any socio-economic value, but people aren’t going to change their minds about eating horse meat until there is some environmental or economic pressure that makes it important to do so.
>
> Harris has come up with a logical, consistent, scientific explanation. Given that your “shit just happens” explanation is equally unconfirmable, I don’t see any reason to discard Harris in favor of that.
>
> Scientific knowledge is often unconfirmable and provisional. We can’t absolutely determine the truth of every step in the origin and development of the universe, but we provisionally accept the explanations that accord with scientific principles. That’s the way it works.
There is nothing particularly “scientific” about his explainations, and they are no more logical than any other. And in the paragraph above, you have resorted to a “shit just happens” (i.e. cultural transmission) explaination yourself to explaim why people don’t eat horses.
The theory Harris is best known for - that Aztec cannibalism is explained by Aztec protein deficiency - is, insofar as it is testible, flatly false. The native American diet of corn and beans was not protein-deficient, and the amount of ritual cannibalism involved insignificant in relation to the population to act as any sort of food source. No account of the Aztec nobility (and it was the nobility that participated in these rituals) indicates that they were hurting for protein; there were other mesoamerican societies that did _not_ practice large-scale ritual cannibalism, including the Aztec predecessors around the valley of Mexico (they considered the Aztecs to be barbarous); etc.
Alternative explainations - that cannibalism had ritual meaning for the Aztecs, that their rituals were designed to demonstrate their warlike prowess, and that the actual food intake from cannibalism was of minimal significance, particularly as the majority of the population would never see even a scrap of man-meat - simply makes more and better sense of the available evidence.
The whole concept is risable. Consider that an Aztec warror was defined by his abilty to take captives, and consider the actual number of captives involved. To become a member of the warrior class, an Aztec warrior had to take at least one captive - in his lifetime. Not much food, even for himself, let alone for his family and other non-warriors.
Not everything in culture is explicable by a hunt for more food or protein and it is hardly “scientific” to start from that premises and ignore evidence that contradicts it. Humans are more complex than that.
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### Author:  [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)
#### Post date: [June 27, 2012, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-a-herd-of-swine-doing-in-israel-in-jesus-day/626330/62 "2012-06-27T15:47:55Z")
> [@Malthus](#):
>
> And in the paragraph above, you have resorted to a “shit just happens” (i.e. cultural transmission) explaination yourself to explaim why people don’t eat horses.
That’s not “shit just happens.” It fits in perfectly with evolutionary theory. Things don’t change drastically unless there is pressure to change them.
> [@](#):
>
> Not everything in culture is explicable by a hunt for more food or protein and it is hardly “scientific” to start from that premises and ignore evidence that contradicts it. Humans are more complex than that.
What is the evidence that contradicts Harris on pigs and cows and horses?
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### Author:  [@Svejk\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Svejk_1)
#### Post date: [June 27, 2012, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-a-herd-of-swine-doing-in-israel-in-jesus-day/626330/63 "2012-06-27T16:28:34Z")
I think it’s pretty funny that someone who goes by ‘Malthus’ should be claiming that other people’s theories with regard to the logic of food provision to a larger group of people are wrong.
From as far as I can gather (which is on the basis of this thread), the Harris theory is perfectly scientific and invokes social mechanisms that are plausible and common. Of course it’s an after the fact explanation, why is that a problem? How is it impossible to prove whether this explanation holds or not? It’s falsifiable, come up with a counterexample and you disprove it?
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### Author:  [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)
#### Post date: [June 27, 2012, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-a-herd-of-swine-doing-in-israel-in-jesus-day/626330/64 "2012-06-27T17:14:40Z")
_… and out came Napoleon himself, majestically upright, casting haughty glances from side to side, and with his dogs gambolling round him._\* He carried a whip in his trotter.
\*
[FONT=Arial][SIZE=2]Just sayin. What goes around comes around.
[/SIZE][/FONT]
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### Author:  [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)
#### Post date: [June 27, 2012, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-a-herd-of-swine-doing-in-israel-in-jesus-day/626330/65 "2012-06-27T17:52:41Z")
> [@Svejk\_1](#):
>
> I think it’s pretty funny that someone who goes by ‘Malthus’ should be claiming that other people’s theories with regard to the logic of food provision to a larger group of people are wrong.
Sadly, I am not, actually Malthus posting from beyond the grave. ☹
😉
> [@](#):
>
> From as far as I can gather (which is on the basis of this thread), the Harris theory is perfectly scientific and invokes social mechanisms that are plausible and common. Of course it’s an after the fact explanation, why is that a problem? How is it impossible to prove whether this explanation holds or not? It’s falsifiable, come up with a counterexample and you disprove it?
The explaination offered using the same theory for those mechanisms which occurred roughly during historic times (Aztec Cannibalism) have been proven, pretty well without doubt, to be false, for the following reasons:
- No evidence of protien deficiency vs. evidence of vegitable-based protien sufficiency (corn & beans)
- Cannibalism on too small a scale to make a difference
- Other cultures in same area thrived without cannibalism.
- Other cultures had mass human sacrifice of captives without eating people (for example, Romans)
Thus, insofar as his theory can be tested, it is demonstratably wrong. It is not demonstratably wrong in the case of kosher pigs, because we know almost nothing about the development of kosher rules re pigs.
However, there is no particular reason to believe his theory is any more accurate where whe know almost nothing about the subject (kosher rules re pigs), than it is when we know a lot (Aztec cannibalism).
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