The people are the most important element in a nation, the spirits of the land and grain are the next; the sovereign is the lightest. Therefore to gain the peasantry is to become sovereign. If your majesty will indeed dispense a benevolent government to the people, being sparing in the use of punishments and fines, and making the taxes and levies light, so causing that the fields shall be plowed deep, and the weeding of them carefully attended to … you will then have a people who can be employed with sticks which they have prepared, to oppose the strong mail and strong weapons of the troops of Ch’in and Ch’u.… The rulers of those two states rob their people of their time so that they cannot plough and weed their fields.… Those rulers as it were, drive their people into pit falls or drown them. In such a case who will oppose your majesty? In accordance with this is the saying, “the benevolent have no enemy” and I beg your majesty not to doubt what I say.
Between these pragmatic doctrines and the emergence of a full-blown religion of love, charity, and the sacredness of human life, there was no great gulf. Already in Mencius’ philosophy, “Benevolence is the distinguishing characteristic of man.”
This balance of the cost/benefits of state-sponsored cannibalism explains, I think, why human sacrifice and cannibalism remained unimportant features of the ancient Old World state religions. Moreover, as Michael Harner has suggested, it may also provide an answer for the first time to the question why political development along the Pacific Coast and highlands of South America culminating in the appearance of the Inca Empire followed the Mesopotamian and Chinese rather than the Aztec pattern. At its prime the Inca Empire embraced a region which extended 1,500 miles from northern Chile to southern Columbia and contained a population of perhaps 6 million people. This vast realm, unlike Mesoamerica under the Aztecs, had an overall political structure of villages, districts, and provinces. Officials appointed by the supreme Inca were responsible for law and order and for the maintenance of high levels of production. Village lands were divided into three parts, the largest of which was the peasant’s own subsistence plot; harvests from the second and third parts were turned over to ecclesiastical and political officials, who were in charge of provincial granaries. These granaries operated on the ever-normal principle. They were used to compensate for annual ups and downs as well as for regional crises. During times of drought their contents were rushed over a network of government roads and suspension bridges to needy provinces. The political philosophy of the Incas, like that of Hammurabi and Confucius, embraced the lingering impulse of generous “bigmanship.” Enemy states were urged to submit to Inca rule in order to enjoy a higher standard of living. Defeated troops, as in early Mesopotamia, were resettled in different parts of the empire and fully incorporated into the peasant work force, while enemy leaders were taken to the capital at Cuzco and indoctrinated with the Incas’ political religion. The Inca army did not march upon its foes under the banner WE WILL EAT YOU. AS in early China and Mesopotamia, the Inca priests did occasionally sacrifice human beings—for the glory of the creator Viracocha and the sun god Inte—but these sacrifices were not an integral part of the war system. Only one or two soldiers from a defeated province were chosen. More often the principal victims appear to have been boys and girls who were primed for the occasion with food, drink, and special privileges. Most important, there is no evidence that the victims were dismembered and eaten.
The Inca priests functioned as redistributors of meat, and sacrifice was a daily event. But the high priests in Cuzco expended their surgical skills on llamas, while at lesser shrines guinea pigs were so honored. Both of these animals, as I pointed out earlier, were absent from the food production inventory of the Aztecs. Of the two, the llama is the more important in the context of the present discussion because it is a member of the camel family, whose natural pasture consists of high-altitude grasses which cannot be eaten by human beings. Recent excavations by J. and E. Pires-Ferreira and Peter Kaulicke of the University of San Marcos in Peru have traced the origin of llama domestication to hunters who invaded the puna of Junin at the end of the last ice age. Domestication was not completed until sometime between 2500 and 1750 B.C.—late by Old World standards but early enough to have played a role at the very beginning of the process of state formation in South America.
Inca llamas and guinea pigs were not inherently less contemptible than Aztec dogs and turkeys; they were simply better sources of meat. Llamas made it possible for the Incas to stop sacrificing human beings because llamas made it possible for the Incas to stop eating human beings. The lesson seems plain: the flesh of the ruminants tamed the appetites of the gods and made the “great providers” merciful.
11
Forbidden Flesh
Earlier I showed that animal domestication originated as a conservation effort triggered by the destruction of the pleistocene megafauna. But what began as an attempt to guarantee meat rations to village populations ended in the usual paradox that we have come to expect whenever a mode of production is intensified to allay reproductive pressures. Sheep, goats, pigs, cattle, and other domestic species originally could be raised primarily for their meat because during early neolithic times villages were surrounded by ample reserves of forests and grazing lands which were not needed for the planting of wheat, barley, and other crops destined for direct consumption by human beings. Yet as human population density soared in response to the expansionist political economies of the early states and empires the area of forests and unplowed grasslands available per capita for animal husbandry grew smaller. Wherever a farming population possessing domesticated animals increased rapidly, a choice had to be made between growing more food plants or raising more animals. Ancient states and empires invariably gave priority to the raising of more food plants since the net calorie return on each calorie of human effort invested in plant production is on the average about ten times greater than the net calorie return obtainable from animal production. In other words, it is energetically much more efficient for human beings themselves to eat food plants than to lengthen out the food chain by interposing animals between plants and people. Grains convert about .4 percent of each unit of photosynthetically active sunlight to humanly edible matter. Feeding grain to cattle yields meat containing only 5 percent of this percentage, that is, .02 percent of the original unit of sunlight. The decision to increase the acreage devoted to farm crops at the expense of the acreage devoted to animal pasture thus represents a strategy aimed at raising and feeding people rather than raising and feeding animals.
But domesticated species are valuable for other products and services. To raise and slaughter them for their meat alone is to destroy their value as traction machines, as producers of fibers, and as providers of fertilizer. Since some of the domesticated species can also be made to yield a continuous supply of animal protein in the form of milk and milk products, one can readily understand why domesticated animals were used with steadily decreasing frequency as a source of meat: they were worth more alive than dead. Therefore, meat gradually disappeared from the daily diet of the common folk of the ancient states and empires, who after thousands of years of “progress” found themselves on the average consuming almost as little animal protein as the common citizens of Tenochtitlán. Over a vast region of the Old World corresponding to the former zones of greatest meat and grain production, animal flesh soon became a luxury whose consumption was increasingly restricted to occasions involving ritual sacrifice and ecclesiastical redistributions. Eventually, the consumption of the flesh of the most expensive species came to be forbidden altogether, while in the regions suffering the greatest depletions meat itself became ritually unclean. Before long there rose for the first time in history ecclesiastical doctrines aimed at inculcating the belief that eating plants was more godlike than eating flesh.
The decline in the per capita consumption of animal flesh represented a decline in nutritional standards. Since this may not seem obvious to modern-day vegetarian enthusiasts, who argue that meat-eating is
a noxious habit, let me clarify this point before going on to ask why the flesh of certain animal species rather than others became taboo in the ancient Middle East. Vegetarians are perfectly correct when they claim that we human beings can satisfy all our nutritional needs by consuming nothing but food plants. All twenty amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, are present in plants. But no one food plant contains all twenty amino acids. The full complement of amino acids can be obtained from food plants only by eating large amounts of bulky nitrogenous foods, such as beans and nuts, plus still larger amounts of starchy grains or root crops on a daily basis. (Beans and nuts are expensive foods in themselves.) Eating meat is therefore a much more efficient way for the body to obtain all the amino acids needed for health and vigor. Meat provides the essential nutrients in highly concentrated packets. As a source of protein, it is physiologically more efficient than food plants and this fact is reflected in the virtually universal preference exhibited by pre-state village peoples for meat over vegetable foods as items in redistributive feasts.
The first domesticated species to become too expensive to serve as a source of meat was probably the pig. We know from the Old Testament that the Israelites were commanded to abstain from the eating of pork early in their history. Since the meat of cattle, sheep, and goats played an important role in the ancient Israelite “great provider” redistributions, prohibition of the consumption of such an excellent source of animal flesh seems difficult to understand. Remains of domesticated pig appear in the neolithic villages of Palestine, Syria, Iraq, and Anatolia almost as early as those of sheep and goats. Moreover, unlike other domesticated species, the pig was domesticated primarily for its flesh. Pigs can’t be milked or ridden, can’t herd other animals, pull a plow, or carry a cargo, and don’t catch mice. Yet as a supplier of meat the pig is unrivaled; it is one of the most efficient converters of carbohydrates to proteins and fat in the entire animal kingdom. For every 100 pounds of feed consumed, a pig will produce about 20 pounds of meat, while from the same amount of feed cattle produce only about 7 pounds. In terms of calories produced per calorie of food, pigs are over three times more efficient than cattle and about two times more efficient than chickens. (Pound for pound, pork has more calories than beef.)
Before I attempt to explain why it was pork that first became the object of supernatural interdictions, let me say something about the general principles governing the establishment of taboos on animal flesh. As suggested by Eric Ross, who has studied the problem of animal taboos among the Indians of the Amazon Basin, the most important general point to be kept in mind is that the ecological role of particular species is not fixed for all time but is part of a dynamic process. Cultures tend to impose supernatural sanctions on the consumption of animal flesh when the ratio of communal benefits to costs associated with the use of a particular species deteriorates. Cheap and abundant species whose flesh can be eaten without danger to the rest of the system by which food is obtained seldom become the target of supernatural proscriptions. Animals that have high benefits and low costs at one time, but that become more costly later on, are the principal targets of supernatural sanctions. The most severe restrictions tend to develop when a nutritionally valuable species not only becomes more expensive but its continued use endangers the existing mode of subsistence. The pig is such a species.
Pig raising incurred costs that posed a threat to the entire subsistence system in the hot, semiarid lands of the ancient Middle East. And this threat increased sharply as a result of intensification, depletion, and population growth linked to the development of pristine and secondary states throughout the region after 4000 B.C. The pig is essentially a creature of forests, river-banks, and the edges of swamps. It is physiologically maladapted to high temperatures and direct sunlight because it cannot regulate its body temperature without external sources of moisture—it cannot sweat. In its natural forest habitat the pig eats tubers, roots, and fruits and nuts that have fallen to the ground. If it is fed on plants with a high cellulose content, it completely loses its advantage over ruminant species as a converter of plants to meat and fat. Unlike cattle, sheep, goats, donkeys, and horses, hogs cannot metabolize husks, stalks, or fibrous leaves; they are no better than people when it comes to living on grass.
When the pig was first domesticated, there were extensive forests covering the hilly flanks of the Taurus and Zagros mountains and the other upland zones of the Middle East. But beginning in 7000 B.C. the spread and intensification of mixed farming and herding economies converted millions of acres of Middle Eastern forests to grasslands. At the same time, millions of acres of grasslands were converted to deserts.
Agricultural and pastoral intensification fostered the spread of arid-land plants at the expense of formerly lush tropical and semitropical vegetation. Authorities estimate that the forests of Anatolia were reduced from 70 percent to 13 percent of total surface area between 5000 B.C. and the recent past. Only one-fourth of the former Caspian shorefront forest remains, one-half of the mountain humid forest, one-fifth to one-sixth of the oak and juniper forests of the Zagros, and one-twentieth of the juniper forests of the Elburg and Khorassan ranges. The regions that suffered most were those taken over by pastoralists or former pastoralists. The history of the Middle East has always been dominated by the ephemerality of the boundary between farm and desert, as epitomized in Omar Khayyam’s verse:
Along some strip of herbage strown
that just divides the desert from the sown.
Today, as R. D. Whyte has noted, “The bald mountains and foothills of the Mediterranean shorelines, the Anatolian plateau, and Iran stand as stark witnesses of millennia of uncontrolled utilization.”
The ancient Israelites arrived in Palestine during the early to middle iron age, about 1200 B.C., and took possession of mountainous terrain which had not previously been cultivated. The woodlands in the Judean and Samaritan hills were rapidly cut down and converted into irrigated terraces. Areas suitable for raising pigs on natural forage were severely restricted. Increasingly, pigs had to be fed grains as supplements, rendering them directly competitive with human beings; moreover, their cost increased because they needed artificial shade and moisture. And yet they continued to be a tempting source of protein and fat.
Pastoralists and settled farmers living in regions undergoing deforestation might be prompted to rear the pig for short-term benefits, but it would be extremely costly and maladaptive to raise pigs on a large scale. The ecclesiastical prohibition recorded in Leviticus had the merit of finality: by making even a harmless little bit of pig raising unclean, it helped put down the harmful temptation to raise a lot of pigs. I should point out that some of my colleagues have challenged this explanation on the ground that if pig raising was really so harmful there would have been no need for special ecclesiastical sanctions against it. “To require a taboo on an animal which is ecologically destructive is cultural overkill. Why use pigs if they are not useful in a stated context?” But it is the role of pigs in an evolving system of production that is under consideration here. To prohibit raising pigs was to encourage raising grains, tree crops, and less costly sources of animal protein. Moreover, just as individuals are often ambivalent and ambiguous about their own thoughts and emotions, so whole populations are often ambivalent and ambiguous about aspects of the intensification processes in which they are participating. Think of the pros and cons of offshore drilling and the ongoing debate about the taboo on abortions. It was not a matter of “cultural overkill” to invoke divine law against the pig any more than it is “cultural overkill” to invoke divine law against adultery or bank robberies. When Jahweh prohibited homicide and incest, he did not say, “Let there be only a little bit of homicide” or “Let there be only a little bit of incest.” Why, then, should he have said, “Thou shalt eat of the swine only in small amounts”?
Some people feel that ecological cost/benefit analysis of pig raising is superfluous because the pig is simply an exceptionally unappetizing
creature that eats human excrement and likes to wallow in its own urine and feces. What this approach fails to cope with is that if everyone naturally felt that way the pig would never have been domesticated in the first place, nor would it continue to be eagerly devoured in so many other parts of the world. Actually, pigs wallow in their own feces and urine only when they are deprived of alternative sources of the external moisture necessary for cooling their hairless and sweatless bodies. Moreover, the pig is scarcely the only domesticated animal that will, given the chance, gobble up human excrement (cattle and chickens, for example show little restraint in this regard).
The notion that the pig was tabooed because its flesh carried the parasite that causes trichinosis should also be laid to rest. Recent epidemiological studies have shown that pigs raised in hot climates seldom transmit trichinosis. On the other hand, naturally “clean” cattle, sheep, and goats are vectors for anthrax, brucellosis, and other human diseases that are as dangerous as anything the pig can transmit, if not more so.
Another objection raised against an ecological explanation of the Israelite pig taboo is that it fails to take into account the fact that the flesh of many other creatures is prohibited in the Old Testament. While it is true that the pig taboo is but one aspect of a whole system of dietary laws, the inclusion of the other interdicted creatures can also be explained by the general cost/benefit principles summarized earlier in this chapter. The majority of the forbidden species were wild animals which could only be obtained by hunting. To a person whose subsistence depended primarily on flocks, herds, and grain agriculture, the hunting of animals—especially of species that had become scarce or which did not live in the local habitat—was a poor cost/benefit bargain.
Cannibals and Kings Page 16