I agree the article presents it a bit weirdly, like a fact of existence. But I can see how it makes sense in a discussion of taboo, since as the article points out, taboos applied differently at different “levels” of that chain.

If the author had included a sentence or two to contextualize it, it might have helped - but he probably expects that the audience already knows about it, and (one hopes) wouldn’t take it literally. But it’s difficult to tell for sure.