Reply #35: Nope, just nonsense. Ancient Egyptians and others happily ate pork.

[onager]

I know you tossed in the word "prehistory," but obviously the Buy-bull wasn't written in prehistoric times.

As one expert summed up, in a link I forgot to copy: "It is very unlikely that the ancients knew of any connection between trichinosis and eating undercooked pork."

It was once believed that ancient Egypt banned pork because the pig symbolized an evil god (Sel). This was later proven untrue, since ancient writings mentioning pig farms and pork have been discovered.

Smoked/salted ham was a staple of the Roman army - certainly one of the few armies in history where soldiers occasionally griped about having too much meat in their rations. Sometimes the preserved meat was all they had for a long spell, which probably caused the griping.

Pig bones have been found everywhere the Romans marched. That kicked off a big fuss in Israel some years ago, when bones from an archeological dig at Masada were buried with great public ceremony. Those bones were thought to be the remains of the Jewish defenders from the revolt in 66-70 CE.

Later excavations uncovered pig bones in the same location. Since those ancient Jewish insurgents certainly didn't sit around munching barbecued pork ribs in their campsites, the Israeli government probably buried the remains of Roman soldiers.