In a message dated 5/1/04 4:00:40 PM, [log in to unmask] writes:


> An anthropologist named Marvin Harris has written extensively on food
> taboos.  He considers them to be practical solutions to mundane
> envirenmental problems.  Pigs need a forest envirenment to thrive: shade,
> leaves to eat and hopefully some puddles.  10,000 years ago the middle east
> was like this.  Early Jewish settlements have lots of pig bones.  At some
> time the climate began to change in the middle east and it became more
> desert like.  Pig farming became uneconomic but some farmers kept trying.
> Hence the outright ban on pork.  He doesn't really explain the other
> prohibitions in the old testament but perhaps hunting for ostriches was just
> a poor use of a farm workers time and so the elders told everyone that from
> now on we aren't allowed to eat them.  Ken
> 

I read that in Harris's Good to Eat book (or was it Cannibals and Kings?) 
anyways those two books have lots of good info.

Elainie