5 ms·

My first thought was disease or outbreak prevention.

MrQuincle 10y ago
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?
- Someone 10y ago
  Presumed witchcraft, bad harvests, a year in which half the goats died, something that came to a shaman could probably have been enough.
- basicplus2 10y ago
  Rats, fleas, bubonic plague
  - amk_ 10y ago
    In 4000 BC?
    - arethuza 10y ago
      Other diseases can be carried by rats, fleas and other pests - e.g. typhus which was possibly the cause of the one of the earliest known epidemics in classical Athens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics
- _coldfire 10y ago
  This was prehistoric. How much knowledge did they actually have of diseases and their causes? You'll still contract smallpox from your neighbour regardless of whether you burnt your village down or not.
  - misja111 10y ago
    They didn't have to know any details about diseases and their causes. It's enough if they noticed that people living in the village were getting sick all the time, while people living outside were not. Apparently 'something' had gotten into their village and it made sense to burn it down and build it up again. And I guess it worked because burning their villages was a way to get rid of disease spreading pests and insects.
    - hinkley 10y ago
      Driving out evil spirits is a perfectly workable theory in a culture lacking both the scientific method and microscopes.
  - MrQuincle 10y ago
    The cool thing about religion is that the only thing that counts is that it "works". 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. :-)
  - VLM 10y ago
    Ah but critical to note, the odds of surviving that smallpox are better in a freshly rebuilt mold free dry draftless house than some old dump of a place with leaky roof and crumbling drafty walls. Also theoretically if you're stuck at home trying to rebuild the village you can't be at the next village over trying to romance some farmers daughter while accidentally catching smallpox. So both the physical act of rebuilding and the result of rebuilding both increase odds of survival. 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.
- falcolas 10y ago
  The halt of otherwise systemic and cyclical mold infestations? There are other documents from that time period which quite explicitly call for the burning of a domacile which was infested with mold.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

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?

Someone 10y ago
Presumed witchcraft, bad harvests, a year in which half the goats died, something that came to a shaman could probably have been enough.
basicplus2 10y ago
Rats, fleas, bubonic plague
- amk_ 10y ago
  In 4000 BC?
  - arethuza 10y ago
    Other diseases can be carried by rats, fleas and other pests - e.g. typhus which was possibly the cause of the one of the earliest known epidemics in classical Athens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics
_coldfire 10y ago
This was prehistoric. How much knowledge did they actually have of diseases and their causes? You'll still contract smallpox from your neighbour regardless of whether you burnt your village down or not.
- misja111 10y ago
  They didn't have to know any details about diseases and their causes. It's enough if they noticed that people living in the village were getting sick all the time, while people living outside were not. Apparently 'something' had gotten into their village and it made sense to burn it down and build it up again. And I guess it worked because burning their villages was a way to get rid of disease spreading pests and insects.
  - hinkley 10y ago
    Driving out evil spirits is a perfectly workable theory in a culture lacking both the scientific method and microscopes.
- MrQuincle 10y ago
  The cool thing about religion is that the only thing that counts is that it "works". 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. :-)
- VLM 10y ago
  Ah but critical to note, the odds of surviving that smallpox are better in a freshly rebuilt mold free dry draftless house than some old dump of a place with leaky roof and crumbling drafty walls. Also theoretically if you're stuck at home trying to rebuild the village you can't be at the next village over trying to romance some farmers daughter while accidentally catching smallpox. So both the physical act of rebuilding and the result of rebuilding both increase odds of survival. 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.
falcolas 10y ago
The halt of otherwise systemic and cyclical mold infestations? There are other documents from that time period which quite explicitly call for the burning of a domacile which was infested with mold.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]