Vegetarianism

9th April, 2009 - Posted by admin - No Comments

Vegetarianism

How old is vegetarianism and/ or Veganism?

Do you know of any tribes or ethnic groups that have been practicing vegetarianism or veganism for thousands of years?

I understand that the earliest Modern Humans were hunter-gatherers and therefore relied upon animal products to survive and propagate.

At what point did vegetarianism or veganism become a viable option. Did it coincide with the introduction of agriculture?

Hi. A lot of information on ancient vegetarianism is based on speculation. Some records from the Ancient Greeks record that people cose Vegetarian diets. Homer and Herodotus mention people in North Africa who only ate lotus plants. Of course, they may simply have been recording a myth.

About 2600 years ago a religion known as Orphism encouraged avoiding meat and the famous Greek mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras (as in the 'Square on the hypotenuse...') was himself a vegetarian and it was known as the 'Pythagorean Diet' which also included avoiding eggs. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle are also recorded as following a Vegetarian Diet. Their objection to meat was partly ethical and partly religious/spritual - they were not trying to be part of a health fad.

Of course it should be remembered that many ancient cultures had some contact with each other and the similarity of avoiding egg and emphasis on non-violence is strikingly similar to the practices in Hinduism wher meat and eggs are avoided by those seeking a more spiritually pure life following the principle of Ahimsa (meaning non-violence). The origins of these beliefs stem back thousands of years.

Also going back thousands of years are the other Asian faiths including Buddhism, Jainism and Taoism all encourage avoiding meat, not all for the same reasons. In Buddhism and Jainism is is about the respect for life and Jainism has the principle of Ahimsa in comon with Hindus.

I think some arguments that we are 'designed' to eat or not eat meat are pretty unscientific. I think ancient people did whatever they could to survive, took high energy high protein food when they could, which included meat. I do think that far back in our evolutionary ancenstry we probably would find a creature that mainly ate fruit and veg - certain physiological traits suggest that, such as enzymes in our saliva designed to help digest plants and also the inability to synthesize vitamin C (as it would have been abundant in the food) in a similar way to how the cat family don't synthesize Taurine, which is abundant in prey animals but don't eat fruit - so instead can make their own vitamin C!

The development of agrigulture is a very important connection.

I think it would be more meaningful to describe ancient people as 'Gatherer/Hunters' - as they woudl have done less hunting and more gathering, just because hunting is a high energy activity, which may be worth it if you can eat what you catch but only goes part way to feed everyone back home. Also meat doesn't keep so there would have been wastage. Also humans cannot survive on meat alone and need other nutrients that would have been gathered.

When agriculture started food became more abundant, and people could start to develop other technologies - initially for farming purposes, but also to help store, protect and cook their produce. Food could be made to last longer and this began to mean that people became less reliant on meat.

Successful agriculture relies on a lot of wisdom, watching the seasons and the stars to time the planting of crops to get a good yield. This probably did lead to the beginning of a priesthood in communities that began to depend on agriculture. I would argue that just about everything that we consider to be the hallmarks of great civilisations depend on agriculture. The great temples, cities and the health of large amounts of people are all a product of agriculture. The ancient Egyptians could not have built the pyramids without the crops to feed the workers bread and beer. If they had tried to feed them with hunted animals they would have run out pretty quickly!

Being able to produce large and reliable amounts of dood through agriculture we have been able to develop all the technologies that make our lives today much easier (or sometimes more stressful).

Thanks to agriculture I don't have to run around in a loincloth all day chasing deer with a bow and arrow.

Thats just a summary I suppose. But its a good question and a real answer would take take hours and a lot of in depth research.

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