7/26/2006: Hindu ritual sacrifice

[Undertoad]

One rarely hears about the practices of dead cultures because... they're dead. But there are tons of 'em -- more cultures gone than currently exist, I would expect.

Sometimes it's obvious. There was a school of thought that believed that no living things should be eaten *including* plants. After a generation, that school of thought no longer existed. You know, like duh.

I'm trying to find better clearer documented examples... I know they exist. A lot of cultures died off by being weak and thus conquered, and the weakness is not considered a mistake. A lot of them were just abandoned.

While you might think the encouragement of vegetarianism in some cultures is "faulty" and will lead to their downfall, I think you need to look no further than to see decades of shunning it in this country and supporting the consumption of the foods we eat isn't exactly doing us a lot of good, either.

It's not the "shunning" of vegetarianism that causes the overconsumption of other foods. I'm absolutely certain that certain food practices in our culture are basically faulty, but overconsumption/production is IMO less of a mistake than throwing good food overboard when you are underproducing to begin with.

And this culture's mistakes do not mean that other cultures don't make mistakes.