And this article says "study from Saudi Arabia, where Brucella is endemic", which I'd say would be a pretty compelling reason not to eat pigs in Saudi Arabia.
This doesn't really track though. Because by this logic, polygamous religions would have overtaken monogamous ones. Or religions like Jainism and Buddhism would have not lasted as long as they did. Religions are not solely evolutionary, nor are the customs and traditions of cultures over time. They aren't genetic traits that evolutionary theory applies to them.
Also consider, nothing about Judaism is disadvantageous by your logic but it has become a small minority religion largely as a result of persecution over the ages. There's not an evolutionary aspect there.
Would they? Are societies where children are hardly more than a number to their fathers necessarily more successful, more stable?
Unlike genetic traits, religions and other cultural traits are software, not hardware. (yes, genetic traits are information, but so is VHDL). Individuals can change their mind, adapt the ways of a different group, not possible with genes.
You point out Judaism, that one's quite an outlier because it's so unaccepting of would be believers who weren't born into it. Turns out forks that do away with that part spread quite far.
Again I don't accept the religions spread solely because of their features that beat out other religions in adaptation. It ignores that people may be convinced about the content of the religion, which people back then would have cared about more, rather than the features of the religion, which we modern people care about nowadays more.
Many religions are unaccepting of people born outside. Hinduism is an example. Even only one section of Hindus was actually allowed to even study the religion at all.
Like I mentioned, and which you ignored, religions like Jainism and Buddhism would have died out. What about Zoroastrianism, Manicheanism, etc. caused them to die out vs something like Jainism.
They had identified a global health issue and a potential source without necessarily knowing all the details. Banning pork seemed reasonnable if they couldn't make sure people don't get sick after eating it.
Man eats pork. Man gets sick. Man believes God made him sick for eating pork.
Why should health risk vectors be framed as religious prohibitions? Shouldn't accumulated observations and common sense, developed since the early Iron Age, be sufficient?
For example, in Judaism, the prohibition of pork consumption [1] is completely unrelated to health risks. Alternatively, are Christians immune to Brucellosis?
What's the reasoning behind not eating pork then? The link you posted calls pigs "unclean" right?
Probably it was some ancient schizo that got his harebrained nonsense written down, or it was just a power flex over adherents as cults do, or some mix of the two. Assuming that these religious rules must have an underlying rational basis is foolish. Given the context of the pork rule, being surrounded by hundreds of completely wacky rules, it seems most likely to me that the pork rule was completely arbitrary and turned out to be "correct" by accident.
Possibly at much lower risk. It appears that this particular dangerous form of brucellosis is not even distributed across regions and this case seems to related to feral rather than farmed pork.
The Greeks in the eastern Mediterranean at the time did eat pork, presumably without a high disease risk, so I would guess the risk was lower in the populations and places from which non-Jewish early Christians came.
From religious perspective, the prohibition was lifted by divine decree somewhere in the 1st century (since Peter, first-century Jew living in Judea, is mentioned). Reported in Acts 10:
... Peter went up on the roof to pray.
10 He became hungry and wanted something to eat, but while the meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance.
11 He saw heaven open and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners.
12 It contained all kinds of four-footed animals and reptiles of the earth, as well as birds of the air.
13 Then a voice said to him: “Get up, Peter, kill and eat!”
14 “No, Lord!” Peter answered. “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.”
15 The voice spoke to him a second time: “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”
---
27 As Peter talked with him, he went inside and found many people gathered together.
28 He said to them, “You know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with a foreigner or visit him. But God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean.
29 So when I was invited, I came without objection. I ask, then, why have you sent for me?”
…
34 Then Peter began to speak: “I now truly understand that God does not show favoritism,
35 but welcomes those from every nation who fear Him and do what is right.
36 He has sent this message to the people of Israel, proclaiming the gospel of peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all.”
A better passage would be Mark 9:17, which explicitly talks about food:
14 Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen to me, everyone, and understand this.
15 Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them.”
17 After he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this parable.
18 “Are you so dull?” he asked. “Don’t you see that nothing that enters a person from the outside can defile them?
19 For it doesn’t go into their heart but into their stomach, and then out of the body.” (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.)
20 He went on: “What comes out of a person is what defiles them.
21 For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder,
22 adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly.
23 All these evils come from inside and defile a person.”
Yep,come and bring your yummy pork and fried calamari metaphor.
They date back thousands of years when no one knew the mechanisms so its not deliberate. It could be evolution of cultures - in that groups that followed certain rules survived better.
The first problem I see with that is that the two main religions that ban pork also have a lot of other rules about food, dress and grooming, sexual behaviour, and lots of other things. SOme of them (hygiene rules, for example) are beneficial, but how do you explain the rest. SOme might have less obvious benefits in the context of the society they originated in - but all?
The other is that you do not need rules to be religious. Social norms are just as powerful. The persistence of circumcision in the US illustrates this. It is still common (usual?) despite the largest religion not only not requiring, but its scriptures specifically state it is not a religious requirement (and dispenses with the entire set of detailed rules - retaining only some more general ones).
Those religious iron-clad decrees could very well be the only reason any of us exist at all, because it allowed people to not just forget, e.g., that time when the tribe ate a big pig feast and 99% of the tribe died.
Pigs are super intelligent, we have the same blood groups, organ compatibility, piglets smell like newborn babies, their skin is very similar to human skin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_toilet
We don't really know the origin of the taboo, but there are more candidate explanations than just epidemiology.