
People Ate Pork in the Middle East Until 1,000 B.C.–What Changed? - onetimemanytime
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/people-ate-pork-middle-east-until-1000-bcwhat-changed-180954614/
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JumpCrisscross
TL; DR

“Sometime in the late second or first millennium BC, the chicken was
introduced into the Middle East.

...

In arid and semiarid areas of the Middle East, the pig and the chicken compete
for food and labor in the human subsistence system. I hypothesize that in arid
and semiarid areas of the Middle East, the chicken largely replaced the pig
because the chicken is a more efficient source of protein, it produces a
secondary product, the egg, and it is a smaller package; hence, a family can
consume one in a day or two. This made the pig redundant and available for use
in other human systems.”

[https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10814-015-9083-2](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10814-015-9083-2)

