Vegetarianism and anthropology

[juantoo3]

Neither evolution nor anthropology proves that humans have been vegetarians either...

For example, can you name one "ancient" society that didn't eat meat? The closest one I can think of are the Ohlone Indians of California, whose diet was estimated to be 70% acorns. However, they opportunistically supplemented their diet with seafood and wild game, particularly in years of low acorn harvests...

It's probably semantics anyway, but what do you mean by "ancient?"

We had a family friend when I was a child who was Hindu (no offense intended if the term is somehow considered offensive, that is how I know). She clearly was very knowledgeable, and even as a child I knew she had written a book. Ten or so years ago I learned my grandfather had a copy of her book and he allowed me to photocopy it. The lady herself has been passed away many many years now, when I was a teen. Reading her book she promoted a strictly vegetarian diet, which at the time was not the fad but I see the same things she wrote way back then being promoted now as some kind of new wave kind of great deal...what she was teaching was ancient tradition!

Now, I don't observe or follow, but I do understand a little, and it corresponds nicely with a lot of medical and pseudo-medical advise about eating well for your health.

That is not to say that our ancestors in pre-history were strictly vegetarians...what evidence has been found indicates clearly they were not. But at some point in our ancient *recorded* history, some societies deemed eating only plants was a healthier diet than eating flesh. And Hinduism is likely the oldest continuous organized religion on the planet, possibly second only to shamanism.

 

[juantoo3]

I understand your concern. We cannot prove that human beings were primarily carnivorous or herbivorous.

Actually...yes anthropologists can...with extremely high powered x-rays examining teeth. That is how they determined the diets of Neandertals and Cro Magnon. And then there's Otzi, the Tyrolean Ice Man...and what they found in his stomach.

 

[juantoo3]

But it's a fact that Humans are made of the exact same composition as animals.

The problem here is that this topic is being dovetailed with societal norms and especially those mentioned in scripture.

We're relating the Pros & Cons in relation to "Religious Borne Maxims".

It is enough to think:

If I am an ape, I eat ape food;
If I am a cow, I eat cow food;

If I am sheep, I run away from wolves!!!

If I am sheep, I do not stray into the feeding grounds of sheep eaters.

Such a sheep would be very "Karma-Wise" indeed to avoid direct contact.

"anthropology" is about grave digging and guess work ---that is all!

Not even a "Bicycle" has an anthropology discovered!

What famous invention was derived from anthropology?

All society [and it's expert knowledge] has been passed down from predecessors' societies.

Who invented Bread? Who discovered rice?

Fire was discovered by half-ape men?

The wheel was developed by pigmies?

Our Earthly Western History has transpired in just a "Couple of Days of the Devas".

We souls in the material world can enjoy for eternity in every sexual position and savor every digestible life-form in every stratum of living organism ---Life after Life.

Liberation and salvation and enlightenment is just for nerds ---who ponder things beyond the mundane, trite and self-centered temporal passage of life.

Some of what you say here I wonder if it is being sarcastic?

I agree humans are made of the same "things" as the animals.

Any "dovetailing" I do is in search of primordial humanity, the threshold that some apelike ancestor crossed into becoming human and why other animals have not crossed the same threshold. If there is a religious component to it...and perhaps there is, perhaps there isn't...at least it is in direct correlation to fact as truth rather than purely dogmatic truth.

As for ""anthropology" is about grave digging and guess work ---that is all!," there is an element of truth here, but the tone is dismissive. Anthropology is about honoring our ancestors and in so doing discovering ourselves. At least it is for me. There is *no* modern invention to compare with that.

All society [and it's expert knowledge] has been passed down from predecessors' societies.

No, it hasn't. Not all expert knowledge from all societies has been passed down, much has been lost over time as it is supplanted by different technologies.

Who invented Bread? Who discovered rice?

Fire was discovered by half-ape men?

The wheel was developed by pigmies?

More sarcasm, yes? The wheel, and likely "bread" as you say, came from Mesopotamia about 5 thousand years ago. Cartoons of a caveman chipping away at a stone wheel are inaccurate.

Liberation and salvation and enlightenment is just for nerds ---who ponder things beyond the mundane, trite and self-centered temporal passage of life.

Pondering beyond the mundane, trite and self-centered temporal passage of life is what makes us human...that is something definitively human.

 

[wil]

My limited knowledge does not stop me from participating....

seems chimps/apes aren't primarily carnivores, but they are omnivores like us....they do eat meat...but primarily fruits and veggies...

they also seem to me to be creatures of convenience, they eat what is readily available, and their canines aren't for tearing flesh anymore, but defense and fighting...they don't have claws, they are designed to run and climb away from most danger....are willing to make tools to make life/eating easier....

We are an extension from them....lazy...convenience is our fortay, and we will make tools to make anything easier....like defense..we don't have claws so we've evolved to drones...moving a lever instead of throwing a sword...

food...foraging to hard, we will make a tool...and cultivate....hunting to hard...we wil make a tool and pen and breed....evolving eventually to.....convenience stores and fast food....

obesity is not an epidemic it is our lazy destiny....

 

[juantoo3]

My limited knowledge does not stop me from participating....

seems chimps/apes aren't primarily carnivores, but they are omnivores like us....they do eat meat...but primarily fruits and veggies...

they also seem to me to be creatures of convenience, they eat what is readily available, and their canines aren't for tearing flesh anymore, but defense and fighting...they don't have claws, they are designed to run and climb away from most danger....are willing to make tools to make life/eating easier....

We are an extension from them....lazy...convenience is our fortay, and we will make tools to make anything easier....like defense..we don't have claws so we've evolved to drones...moving a lever instead of throwing a sword...

food...foraging to hard, we will make a tool...and cultivate....hunting to hard...we wil make a tool and pen and breed....evolving eventually to.....convenience stores and fast food....

obesity is not an epidemic it is our lazy destiny....

Greetings Wil!

So war is ever with us, then? It is part and parcel of what and who we are? Just as peace is?

I'm inclined to think convenience, as such, is more of a modern conception, like perhaps the last 50 years or so, perhaps 100. When did Ford begin to offer the automobile, or more important to this discussion, the tractor? I seem to recall Ford is quoted as saying his creation was to lift the burden from draft animals, so now we have mechanized farms. City folk seem to forget what it was like a scant two generations ago when folks still lived on what amounted to small farms. Folks were poor in money but rich in resourcefulness. That is almost extinct now, in a very short time.

How many folks reading this can butcher a hog? Without looking it up. How many here have actually done so? There's your convenience...step into the store and pick up a cello wrapped six-pack of pre-cut pork chops and a squishy white plastic tube of Jimmy Dean breakfast sausage and you're good to go!

How many of us stop...even for a moment...even on rare occasion...to realize what was in the plastic was alive the week before, basking in the sun, rolling in the mud? How many of us here even care?

There's your convenience...at least as I see it.

Being able to look your next meal in the eye and do what you need to in order to feed yourself and your family, and take and receive the consequences to your soul and spirit and own them for what they are...that is lost, that is a non-starter anymore in our citified modern societies. "We" have lost touch with ourselves and with the nature we come from and are an integral part of. We've forgotten who we really are.

(No mistake...vegans are just as guilty!)

 

[wil]

vegans just as guilty....yes when we find that plants encourage bees to polinate them by sending out electirical pulses for less than 1/100th of a second and electrical voltage and frequency varies for the bees you attracting....and some add cafiene (citrus) if they aren't polinating fast enough to get them wired and going.... if you aren't going to eat sentient beings....what will we eat?

As to hiring assassins to murder, slice, dice and place our food on styrofoam that is lazy...I prefer to eat that which I named, fed, petted and wrung its neck.

And I still believe your laziness understanding is the same as mine....you are just looking at the tail of the exponential curve in lazinesss which corresponds to our exponential curve in tool making....

btw, so glad to see you around the farm, hope all is well for you and your bride!

 

[juantoo3]

btw, so glad to see you around the farm, hope all is well for you and your bride!

We are as well as can be hoped, thanks for asking! My new hips are a G*d-send, my mobility is so much better and my pain level is almost nil. Bought a new house for Christmas, a fixer upper, so that takes my time lately. Stopped by on lunchbreak.

But I digress...what was the OP again?

 

[juantoo3]

As for ""anthropology" is about grave digging and guess work ---that is all!," there is an element of truth here, but the tone is dismissive. Anthropology is about honoring our ancestors and in so doing discovering ourselves. At least it is for me. There is *no* modern invention to compare with that.

I want to expand on this for bhaktajan.

I can understand apprehension with colonialism, and many things can, were and are abused in an effort to further subjugation and exert power. I can see how someone bearing the name "anthropologist" can be, wittingly or not, used as a tool of a government bent on exerting power. That is a driving force behind my disagreement within anthropology about interfering with existing cultures. I prefer to observe and leave well enough alone, in the hope of adding to the global stew (or meltingpot, or patchwork quilt, whatever your preferred analogy). This is in line with your comment earlier to which I replied that not all cultural expert knowledge has been preserved or passed down.

I've had the discussion in the past with PoO, about Alaskan Inuits and how their culture has been subverted and essentially destroyed. She took a different view, that the role of an anthropologist is to help a disenfranchised (my term, for lack of a better word) culture get their piece of the pie. Frankly, I still disagree. The role of anthropology in my view is to glean the "expert knowledge" as you put it, before it disappears. If one is biased from the beginning with a cultural superiority complex, one wouldn't even recognize "expert knowledge" if it were taking place right in front of one. This I vehemently disagree with, and I think in the end is a great disservice to the discipline of anthropology.

FWIW, my (bit more than) two cents worth.

 

[wil]

An antrhopologist is supposed to be an active converter? Not an observer....

wow, I had no idea....(heavy sarcasm alert)

I thought that was simply the purview of western white man, to go show backward cultures how backward they are, get them buying our cigarettes, acquiring our cancers and heart diseases, wasting energy, polluting their land with plastic and thier minds with television....when did anthropologists take that over....

 

[juantoo3]

An antrhopologist is supposed to be an active converter? Not an observer....

wow, I had no idea....(heavy sarcasm alert)

I thought that was simply the purview of western white man, to go show backward cultures how backward they are, get them buying our cigarettes, acquiring our cancers and heart diseases, wasting energy, polluting their land with plastic and thier minds with television....when did anthropologists take that over....

Yeah, well...western white men are still behind it all. It's just that hiding behind an anthropologist helps give them an air of legitimacy. <wink, wink>

So I tend to stay away from modern applications of the discipline. My primary focus has always been with the historical aspects anyway.

 

[LincolnSpector]

I don't know if there was ever a point to prove with this topic, I just wanted to move it out of the way. One point might have been, CAN we live like vegetarians, or SHOULD we live like vegetarians?

I've been living as a vegetarin for more than 40 years now. Don't think it hurt me.