Yes. Makes sense to me, and probably the habit had been ritualistic. Hence a combination of fumigation and religion.
What kind of diseases would actually be prevented by burning down single towns though?
What kind of diseases would actually be prevented by burning down single towns though?
You'll still contract smallpox from your neighbour regardless of whether you burnt your village down or not.
And I guess it worked because burning their villages was a way to get rid of disease spreading pests and insects.
Also some of the traditions in the old testament might be beneficial w.r.t. health for example. There is a lot about diet (pork meat, blood, milk, seafood). There are social rules about leprosy, children, elderly. It's not such a stretch to think that those rules filter the societies that survive. It's Darwinian but on the level of religious/spritual memes. Don't tell Dawkins. :-)
An interesting resource allocation problem is they may have liked building houses out of older hardwood but if they any random dude chop down and use wood they might very well exceed their carrying capacity so nobody build nothing unless we all split the "house wood" stand of trees equally, perhaps after we burn the village completely down.
Another interesting idea is you can burn the bark off trees for building if you're really careful, but if you're not careful, you'll burn the whole log, maybe take the whole village down. So annual barkless log house construction... 95% odds the village gets a new hut and the fleas get fumigated, 5% odds the whole village goes up in flames. Well sometimes ya gotta roll the dice, I guess.