By Tim Lambert
Pigs are intelligent animals. Wild pigs are clean animals. However, for humans, pigs are very useful. Pigs were first domesticated in Western Asia about 8,000 BC. They later spread to Europe. Pigs were independently domesticated in China about 6,000 BC. In the Roman Empire, pork was a common food. The famous doctor, Galen (c. 130–210 AD) praised pork as a nutritious food.
In the Middle Ages, pigs were common in Europe. They were useful because they reproduced quickly and because they ate almost anything! They were allowed to forage in forests in the autumn to fatten them. The Spanish took pigs to the Americas.
Pigs were also common in China. Bacon was invented in China about 1,500 BC. Later, the Romans ate bacon. In the Middle Ages, it was a common food in Europe.
In 12th-century England, all pork was called Bacoun. Over time, it came to mean only a specific type of meat from pigs. The phrase ‘bring home the bacon’ was first recorded in the USA in 1906. The word pork is derived from the Old French word for pig, porc. It was first used in England in the 13th century.
The Old English word for pig was a swine. A pig was originally a young swine, but in the Middle Ages, it came to mean adult animals as well. The word hog was once used to mean young pigs bred for slaughter, but also meant young sheep that had not been shorn. In time, it came to mean a pig.
Today, pork is one of the most popular types of meat in the world.
A pig flew for the first time in 1909. John Moore-Brabazon carried a piglet in a basket on his plane. It was the first case of a flying pig.
In the 1980s, a trend began of keeping pigs as pets. They can be trained like dogs, and they are affectionate animals.
The story Three Little Pigs first appeared in print in the 1840s, but the story is probably much older. The Disney cartoon Three Little Pigs was made in 1933. Porky Pig first appeared in a cartoon in 1935. Peppa Pig, the cartoon pig, was first shown on TV in 2004.
Pig iron is molten iron poured into a sand mould. It’s thought it was called pig iron because it flowed along a channel, which branched into multiple channels into moulds. It looked a bit like a sow (female pig) feeding piglets. The phrase ‘sweating like a pig’ arose because, as pig iron cools and hardens, drops of dew form on it. The pig iron looked like it was sweating.
A video about the story of pigs.
