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Interesting...100 or more years back, indians would regularly eat and drink from copper dishes & cups http://www.sanskritimagazine.com/ayurveda/why-copper-was-
by cryptozeus 10y ago
Interesting...100 or more years back, indians would regularly eat and drink from copper dishes & cups
http://www.sanskritimagazine.com/ayurveda/why-copper-was-used-by-our-ancestors/ http://www.sanskritimagazine.com/ayurveda/why-copper-was-use...
- jdmichal 10y agoReminds me of the Physician and the Priest: http://www.jhuger.com/the-physician-and-the-priest http://www.jhuger.com/the-physician-and-the-priest
- LordKano 10y agoThis particular story is new to me but when I was in high school, a teacher once presented me with the idea that this is the origin of many if not most cultural/religious taboos. It made perfect sense to me. Don't eat pork. They didn't know about trichinosis but they did notice that people who ate pork got sick and sometimes died. Don't sleep around. They didn't understand what syphilis was but they did notice that people who had lots of indiscriminate sex got sick and sometimes died.
- Shorel 10y agoWasn't syphilis acquired from the Americas? But yeah, there are many other illnesses that can explain sex taboos.
- LordKano 10y agoI don't think it has been definitively proven but it could have been.
- seanp2k2 10y agoThis was also discussed in a sub-thread of this article from 2 days ago if anyone wants to dive a bit deeper into this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13549173 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13549173 I personally find it fascinating when cultural wisdom turns out to have a scientific explanation which reveals the real [lost] truth to that lore.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- danans 10y agoI'd be careful with the content that site. It has a pretty transparently religious-nationalist agenda. But to the content of the article, 100 years ago obesity wasn't a significant problem in India, and India was not the only society that used copper cookware. If anything, it was probably used for its ductility (hence ease of forming), and its pleasing reddish color.
- cryptozeus 10y agoSure some of it may be out of context and religious propaganda but sometimes these traditions became traditions for a reason. They must have seen benefits of using copper for such use, they also have lots of gold and silver yet they used copper.
- danans 10y agoI don't doubt that they saw benefits to its use, but the most obvious reason to use copper instead of gold and silver is that it's far, far less expensive.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]