Interesting that in South America, that apparently, 6 domesticated pigs brought by the conquistadors escaped. Over the years these regressed and re-expressed the wild boar features of tusks and fur tgat had been bred out of them
Domesticated pigs don’t likely compete for food but were, instead, the village garbage eaters so nothing was wasted!
Of the Israelite Canaanites tribes, (under pressure of Pharaonic dominance of tribes in the fertile plains), fled to
the highlands, and uniquely for all Canaanite tribes, no pig bones ever found in any of the very numerous early typical Hebrew 4 roomed stone homes excavated to date. Only cattle that chew the cud and had split hooves.
I think that the pig might have been considered “unclean”, bringing “impurity” with it, as they ate food waste and by then concepts of ritual “cleanliness” and “purity” were well established including the idea that limestone couldn’t be contaminated, or debased but clay vases could.
So the culture classified and segregated all objects and people as either pure, already impure, capable of becoming impure
….or, uniquely limestone vessels, immune from contamination by contact!
In the same fashion, a woman during menses was unclean and needed, after flow had ceased, a ritual bath before she could be pure again and lie with a man once more.
So given the highly developed hierarchies of purity, it’s utterly reasonable, within such a mindset that pork would be shunned as unclean!
What impresses me is the great skill and traditions that were developed in the Christian West in using pork as not only a high quality food source, but that techniques of curing, seasoning and sausage making with pork became central to local and National culture.
Asher
