[swampthing]

That's not at all the conclusion of the article you linked to. In fact, that theory is discounted by it.

> Price points out, however, that none of these theories fully accounts for the taboo. Pig-rearing, after all, had existed for thousands of years in the region, even in times of drought, and many types of meat can harbor the larvae that cause trichinosis.

> For Price, the key piece of evidence is the sole reason given for the taboo in the biblical text—the fact that the pig “has hooves and does not chew its cud.” In other words, it’s unlike ruminants. He argues that this harks back to an era when the Israelites were simple pastoralists. As their descendants settled down in towns and cities, raising pigs became a more viable option. “This detracted from the fantasy of living like their ancestors,” says Price, prompting Judean priests to ban eating pork.

> 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. So did tensions between Judeans and their Hellenistic rulers, including the Ptolemaic kings of Egypt and the leaders of the Seleucid Empire based in today’s Iraq.

[teleforce]

If you care to read the comments for the mentioned article (318 comments) including mine, perhaps you'll get the different perspectives on eating pork [1].

Although the article is a good one but the conclusions can be misleading because it's biased toward archeological evidences that most probably did not tell the entire story.

Just like the history of people migration you simply cannot rely on one aspect of archeological evidences alone by ignoring genetic and proto-languages, for examples.

The same with dietary constraints and prohibitions you need to take into account other evidences for example religions together with the other archeological evidences.

Although the article mentioned religions early on but it kind of dismissed them at the end. For me it's rather myopic view and incomplete methodology of doing research since you need to take every relevant aspects into account for your valid conclusions especially the other important factors in dietary constraints in this case the religious prohibitions.

[1] The Origin of the Pork Taboo:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43418499

[swampthing]

I don't think that's accurate — the article doesn't dismiss religions at all, it examines theories for why religions have the taboo in the first place.

[teleforce]

I'm not sure about you but for me the article seems to dismiss the religion factors in the conclusion towards the end although he started from the religious perspective but the weightage for the religion is kind of fade towards the end. The pork dietary constraint and prohibition from Abrahamic religious point of view, started since the beginning of humanity. But this very fact seems missing from the article's conclusion. And the fact the pork is the common dominator of the dietary constraint and prohibition across three major world's religion dietary constraint, it's the elephant in the room that's not addressed and highlighted clearly the in the conclusion [1].

Since Abrahamic religion is very strict on the dietary constraint on pork that strangely or anomalously ignored by the Christians, but not by Jews or Muslim. But apparently the Christians also ignored many religious ruling based on their own Bible including the controversial circumcision that the other two Abrahamic religions observed religiously (pardon the pun) [2].

If all the Abrahamic religions including Judaism, Islam and Christianity (world's three major religions) do follow and observe the pork dietary constraint and prohibition, recommended and ordained by their respective holy books, we are looking at more than half (simple majority) of the world populations are not eating pork due to religious prohibitions.

[1] Religious restrictions on the consumption of pork:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_restrictions_on_the_...

[2] Religion and circumcision:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_and_circumcision

[swampthing]

By "dismiss the religion factors", do you mean that the author attributed the religious taboos to non-religious origins?