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[–] 78 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (5 children)

In case anyone's wondering, the response is made up. The editorial that the OP excerpt comes from is also fantastical and totally unsupported by any accounts that I can find, but for the sake of context, it continues:

He buried a quantity of beans in mud, let them remain there for a few weeks, and then retrieved them. He noted their resemblance to human fetuses, thus convincing himself of the intimate relationship between beans and humans. To eat a bean would therefore be akin to eating human flesh. Equally, to crush, smash, or dirty a bean would be to harm a human. Thus the very strict rule to abstain from beans.

Just to restate this, that article is not verifiable or based on reliable accounts, and it cites no sources.

No one really knows why the Pythagoreans didn't eat fava beans. Historical speculation from a few sources includes:

  • farts are bad
  • beans are bad for your health
  • beans cause bad sleep
  • they're basically animals, in the same category as meat and eggs
  • temple mystics advise not to eat them
  • they're the same shape as the universe
  • they're the same shape as genitals
  • they're used to cast votes, and you shouldn't associate with politicians
  • Pythagoras just didn't like them
  • just don't, okay
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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago

    He noted their resemblance to human fetuses

    Ah yes, the early human fetus, famously very visually distinct from the early fetuses of other mammals. /s

    Also, would he even have had access to human fetuses in the first place? More so than other animals' fetuses (since he apparently naturally associated the shape of the bean specifically to human fetuses)? I looked into it a bit, and I have my doubts. Pythagoras (Wikipedia) lived c. 570 – c. 495 BC, hundreds of years before human dissections were a thing in Ancient Greece. His listed main interests do not include anything medicine-adjacent. He did travel, I suppose.

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  • [–] 31 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    This is what people did before the Internet if they weren't drinking or copulating.

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  • [–] 20 points 1 month ago (2 children)
  • [–] 16 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    "people just thought whatever" in complete contra to today...

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago

    I was thinkkng the same:
    "Earth is flat" (Pythagore knew it wasn't)
    "They use chemtrail to turn you [whatever]"
    "Give all the money to the rich, it will trickle down!"
    "Vaccines don't work"
    The list goes on

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  • [–] 14 points 1 month ago

    Great, now that you've shared it on Lemmy we will never hear the end of it

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  • [–] 13 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    In what world do beans smell like cum?

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  • [–] 13 points 1 month ago

    According to Thomas L. Heath (1861–1940), no specific attribution of the theorem to Pythagoras exists in the surviving Greek literature from the five centuries after Pythagoras lived. However, when authors such as Plutarch and Cicero attributed the theorem to Pythagoras, they did so in a way which suggests that the attribution was widely known and undoubted. -- Wikipedia

    Schrödinger's Pythagorean theorem.

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  • [–] 13 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    it smelled like what? cHm? cym? cxm?
    We will never know

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  • [–] 9 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    When you eat enough beans for your cum to smell like beans, you ate too many beans.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 month ago

    “Pythagoras didn’t eat meat or beans!” -The Death of Pythagoras

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  • [–] 8 points 1 month ago

    Well, all life has spawned from the same source so technically correct.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 month ago (2 children)
  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago

    Tastes like it too

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