CHAPTER 2 – A Brief History of Vegetarianism, How It Started and What It All Means
When you think of early man, odds are that the first image that pops into your mind is that of a spear-carrying Neanderthal dragging a large, dead animal home to his cave for dinner. We’ve long held onto the erroneous notion that our ancestors were mighty warriors who took down gigantic beasts with their bows, arrows, and flint knives, and tore into meat as their primary source of nourishment.
But the truth is more complicated than that. Certainly there were eras in human history when meat was a staple; during the Ice Age, for example, the ground was so cold and hard that there was hardly any vegetation, so the Neanderthal was forced to hunt down animals to fill his grumbling tummy. But the very earliest humans were more gatherers than hunters and actually scavenged the remains of animals that were killed by other predators. Studies by anthropologists indicate that early man was far more interested in feasting on the nutrient-rich bone marrow of animals rather than on their flesh and that he used tools to cut away the meat, not to eat it, but to remove it from the desired bones.
Early man’s diet consisted of what he could find growing where he lived— vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds. By combining those, and relying primarily on a diet of calcium-rich wild greens, he was able to get all of the vitamins, iron, protein, fats, and carbohydrates that he needed. Animals were yet to be domesticated, so the only meat our ancestors had to eat was either what they chased down or found lying about—gathering nuts and seeds was simply more productive than counting on being able to catch and cook an animal by supper time. Eventually, man developed agriculture, raising vegetables and grains and domesticating animals for meat and dairy. But, before that time, some ten thousand years ago, man relied heavily on that which he could pluck from trees, bushes, and the ground, and 90 percent of his diet was made up of plant food. So toss out the idea that man is at heart a carnivore; we are, in fact, omnivores, able to eat meat but certainly not required to by our biology or our history.
The Pythagorean Credo
By the time man’s adventures were being jotted down in scriptures and testaments, nonvegetarians had become commonplace, but there were still those who advised against the practice. In the Old Testament’s Book of Daniel, it is said that Daniel refused the wealthy king Nebuchadnezzar’s feast of rich foods, meat, and wine and asked for only vegetables and water for ten days. At the end of that period, Daniel asked that his health and that of his companions be compared to those who indulged in the fare of the king’s table, and Daniel’s group was deemed “better in appearance and fatter in flesh” than those who ate the king’s diet. The parable was intended to show that Daniel was a smart, strong iconoclast, able to assert himself in the presence of a king, but it also serves as one of the earliest records of the superiority of a vegetarian lifestyle—and how going against the nonvegetarian norm was, even then, considered an act of rebellion!
But the earliest vegetarian diet, way back in the sixth century BC and long before the term “vegetarian” was coined, was the Pythagorean Diet. The Greek philosopher Pythagoras, famous for his contributions to geometry and mathematics, strongly believed in the reincarnation of the soul; he preached an ethical lifestyle that included injunctions against killing living creatures, whether for purpose of sacrifice or for eating of meat. His prescribed diet was very close to today’s vegan diet and attracted two different classes of adherents. One elite group, who studied directly under Pythagoras and was called the mathematikoi (“mathematicians”), followed an extremely restricted regimen, eating only cereals, bread, honey, fruits, and some vegetables. A larger group of followers, who attended lectures by the philosopher and was called the akousmatikoi (“listeners”), were allowed to eat meat and drink wine but were required to abstain on certain days.
According to historical documents, Pythagoras told his followers, “Oh, my fellow men! Do not defile your bodies with sinful foods. We have corn, we have apples bending down the branches with their weight, and we have grapes swelling on the vines. There are sweet herbs, and vegetables, which can be cooked and softened over the fire, nor are you denied milk or thyme-scented honey. The earth affords a lavish supply of riches, of innocent foods, and offers you banquets that involve no bloodshed or slaughter: only beasts satisfy their hunger with flesh, and not even all of those, because horses, cattle, and sheep live on grass.” His biographer, Diogenes, wrote that Pythagoras ate millet or barley bread and honeycomb in the morning and raw vegetables at night and that he paid fishermen to throw their catches back into the ocean.
The Pythagorean diet—which the philosopher claimed the goddess Demeter had taught to Heracles who in turn had taught the same to him— became known as the choice of intellectuals and rebels and was banned by the Roman government. But in the smaller, outlying Greek states, the Pythagorean diet was more acceptable and found a wide share of adherents. Pythagoras wasn’t the only philosopher to advise that a vegetarian diet was healthier and more ethical than a meat-eating one. Hippocrates, Socrates, Plato, Seneca, Ovid, and Virgil, all advocated vegetarian diets. Throughout the times that followed, Pythagoras’ teachings, including his diet, retained its advocates, even seeing a resurgence of popularity in Europe during the seventeenth century when a devout Christian named Thomas Tryon read the works of the German mystic Jacob Böhme and started a Hindu vegetarian society in London.