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Why do we have to posit non-human monsters as explanations for these myths? After all, there were (and still are) real monsters out there that would kill, rape,

Why do we have to posit non-human monsters as explanations for these myths? After all, there were (and still are) real monsters out there that would kill, rape, kidnap and torture people - people from other communities. Strange danger was serious business back in the day, why could that not evolve into all kinds of boogeymen?

henearkr 5y ago
This is what I thought when was evoked cannibalism: what if those were the traces of sapiens festing of neanderthalis (and not neanderthalis eating neanderthalis, as seems to be supposed in the text)?
- DoingIsLearning 5y ago
  As far as I understand Neanderthal genes in Humans don't actually exist in the Y chromosome. That means that only female Neanderthals transmitted their genes down the Sapiens gene tree. This could mean all sort of things. Maybe Neanderthal Males with Female Humans didn't generate viable off-spring. Maybe Our selection process favored non-Neanderthal genes and it was phased out of the Y chromosome gene pool? Maybe as you said Sapiens have a much darker past?
  - saalweachter 5y ago
    Eh, I'd keep "that Y-line just didn't survive the last N0,000 years" as the default assumption. Just out of curiosity do you know if the Neanderthal mitochondrial line survives in humans today?
  - caymanjim 5y ago
    Given how human babies are already at the maximum size a human female can deliver, I suspect you may be on to something. Other species don't have such traumatic births, but human babies barely fit through the birth canal. Neanderthal babies were probably much larger. In particular, their skulls. If a Neanderthal male impregnated a human female, I wouldn't be surprised if it killed her. Conversely, a Neanderthal female probably had an easier time delivering a hybrid baby.
  - hollerith 5y ago
    >only female Neanderthals transmitted their genes down the Sapiens gene tree That would be right if the only genes a man passes to his children are on the Y chromosome, but a man passes 23 chromosomes to every one of his children. (One of those 23 will be either an X or a Y.)
- archi42 5y ago
  I agree, lots of possibilities there, making the "widespread cannibalism" theory indeed pretty weak overall: It's quite possible that neanderthals only reverted to cannibalism in times of severe famines - which are not that unlikely to happen regularly over these huge time span. And I think that would still hold for modern humans (I think some air plane crash survivors did that). Or maybe there was some cult/religion/tradition that demanded that specific enemies (or relatives) shall be eaten to harvest their "power". Again, some of our contemporary, modern humans still did that until quite recent (IIRC there was something with brains on HN recently, and how those who ate them [primarily that societies women] contracted brain diseases from their dead).
- astrobe_ 5y ago
  My thoughts too. Something/someone ate these corpses using tools. Also, is there some proof that it is a usual thing? Because modern humans in particular circumstances can do cannibalism too. So it seems that there are a lot of extrapolations there. Another point seemed to me a bit far fetched: that due to anatomy Neanderthals could not speak. But there are birds that imitate pretty well human speech.
7952 5y ago
I think this tendency may be related to theory of mind. A monster isn't just a danger, it is something that we have attributed with intent, desire and emotions. Those emotions just happen to be malicious. That trait helps us to conceptualise the threat, but often goes into to over-drive. And that ability is not dependent on threat, it is just intrinsic to humanity. Children in safe and happy homes still make up monsters.
notahacker 5y ago
Think this applies to a lot of searching for accuracy in mythology. It's a bit like the attempts to connect rather abstract and ahistorical flood myths with specific post Ice Age deluges. Maybe the Epic of Gilgamesh was a >10,000 year old oral tradition describing the end of the Ice Age... or maybe it was just that massive flood was about the most tangible way for humans building civilisations on flood plains to imagine the gods destroying everything.
- gota 5y ago
  This is in line with my (admittedly not well researched) theory of why 'many primitive cultures built pyramids': a square-based pyramid is the most stable structure that you can build to be really high. Columns, arches and metalworking are the things that allowed us to come up with something else, right?
jillesvangurp 5y ago
Supplement the list provided in the article by more modern boogeymen such as Negroes, Jews, Arabs, etc. and you have a nice explanation of recent history. I realize this may be deeply offensive to some of the readership here and emphasize that I don't look at the world in these terms. However, recent history is full of people that actually do demonize these groups of people; no matter how irrational that is. Nothing has changed here except our ability to find meaningless differences among groups of people with enough of a qualifier to split the world into "us" and "them". It's a natural reflex that transcends genetics, race, and other ways to qualify people as us and them. There have been plenty of experiments to suggest that this us and them reasoning does not really have to involve anything meaningful or substantial. E.g. the Stanford Prison Experiment is a great example where giving some people a uniform is enough to trigger the effect. IMHO Neanderthals did not actually disappear and the different subspecies of humanity simply merged to create a more fit offspring. Apparently humans carry enough neanderthal DNA to suggest that inter (sub)species breeding was a thing. Is that "us" or "them" or does that even mean anything? What do we call the humans without this DNA? Pure breads or ancestors? Is that better, worse, or just different? Is that even a thing? I.e. didn't those humans just die out? We like to dramatize things into epic battles, fights, etc. But life a few thousand years ago was brutal and very much survival of the fittest biased. Apparently, humans with some neanderthal DNA were somewhat fitter and survived into modernity. No need to get judgemental about that.
- jgilias 5y ago
  We should be careful not to chastise people from the past from the viewpoint of our comfy and safe lives. It's easy to sneer at our ability to divide people into 'us' versus 'them' over meaningless differences, when it's not you worrying about a night raid where you get scalped and your wife raped.
  - moate 5y ago
    Meh. The vast majority of people subscribed to some religion or another and all the major religions say don't do rape or murder. I think it's reasonable to point out the moral failings of the past relative to their own morality. Seems perfectly reasonable to say "these people did bad things". If you want to then go a step further and say "they did bad things because reasons" that's fine, but the bad things were still done and pretending that providing some context justifies it is just as flawed an analysis as saying it doesn't. The world is nuanced AF.
emmanueloga_ 5y ago
"people from other communities" ... from other communities? How about just "people".
- rebuilder 5y ago
  That's true, but generally you don't see a community systematically slaughter, enslave and torture people they consider part of their community. Prison comes close, but note that usually prisoners are seen as outcasts.
wolverine876 5y ago
One interpretation of the origin of such monsters, from Beowulf: That bloodshed, for that Cain slew Abel, the Eternal Lord avenged: no joy had he of that violent deed, but God drove him for that crime far from mankind. Of him all evil broods were born, ogres and goblins and haunting shapes of hell, and the giants too, that long time warred with God - for that he gave them their reward. The original Old English text refers to the monsters as eotenas ond ylfe ond orcneas, swylce gigantas, and other translations seem to disagree on their meaning; however, orcneas meant evil spirits, according to the Oxford English Dictionary and to Tolkien (who was a leading scholar of Old English in his day job).[0] (I assume you are not saying that "people from other communities" are actually monsters, but referring to historical ignorance.) [0] If you can access the OED, see the entry for orc.
- rebuilder 5y ago
  I'm saying that people historically sometimes act like monsters when they meet people from other communities. Enslavement. Pillaging. Murder. Rape. Salting the fields. Etc. etc. etc.

henearkr 5y ago

This is what I thought when was evoked cannibalism: what if those were the traces of sapiens festing of neanderthalis (and not neanderthalis eating neanderthalis, as seems to be supposed in the text)?

DoingIsLearning 5y ago
As far as I understand Neanderthal genes in Humans don't actually exist in the Y chromosome. That means that only female Neanderthals transmitted their genes down the Sapiens gene tree. This could mean all sort of things. Maybe Neanderthal Males with Female Humans didn't generate viable off-spring. Maybe Our selection process favored non-Neanderthal genes and it was phased out of the Y chromosome gene pool? Maybe as you said Sapiens have a much darker past?
- saalweachter 5y ago
  Eh, I'd keep "that Y-line just didn't survive the last N0,000 years" as the default assumption. Just out of curiosity do you know if the Neanderthal mitochondrial line survives in humans today?
- caymanjim 5y ago
  Given how human babies are already at the maximum size a human female can deliver, I suspect you may be on to something. Other species don't have such traumatic births, but human babies barely fit through the birth canal. Neanderthal babies were probably much larger. In particular, their skulls. If a Neanderthal male impregnated a human female, I wouldn't be surprised if it killed her. Conversely, a Neanderthal female probably had an easier time delivering a hybrid baby.
- hollerith 5y ago
  >only female Neanderthals transmitted their genes down the Sapiens gene tree That would be right if the only genes a man passes to his children are on the Y chromosome, but a man passes 23 chromosomes to every one of his children. (One of those 23 will be either an X or a Y.)
archi42 5y ago
I agree, lots of possibilities there, making the "widespread cannibalism" theory indeed pretty weak overall: It's quite possible that neanderthals only reverted to cannibalism in times of severe famines - which are not that unlikely to happen regularly over these huge time span. And I think that would still hold for modern humans (I think some air plane crash survivors did that). Or maybe there was some cult/religion/tradition that demanded that specific enemies (or relatives) shall be eaten to harvest their "power". Again, some of our contemporary, modern humans still did that until quite recent (IIRC there was something with brains on HN recently, and how those who ate them [primarily that societies women] contracted brain diseases from their dead).
astrobe_ 5y ago
My thoughts too. Something/someone ate these corpses using tools. Also, is there some proof that it is a usual thing? Because modern humans in particular circumstances can do cannibalism too. So it seems that there are a lot of extrapolations there. Another point seemed to me a bit far fetched: that due to anatomy Neanderthals could not speak. But there are birds that imitate pretty well human speech.

7952 5y ago

I think this tendency may be related to theory of mind. A monster isn't just a danger, it is something that we have attributed with intent, desire and emotions. Those emotions just happen to be malicious. That trait helps us to conceptualise the threat, but often goes into to over-drive. And that ability is not dependent on threat, it is just intrinsic to humanity. Children in safe and happy homes still make up monsters.

notahacker 5y ago

Think this applies to a lot of searching for accuracy in mythology. It's a bit like the attempts to connect rather abstract and ahistorical flood myths with specific post Ice Age deluges. Maybe the Epic of Gilgamesh was a >10,000 year old oral tradition describing the end of the Ice Age... or maybe it was just that massive flood was about the most tangible way for humans building civilisations on flood plains to imagine the gods destroying everything.

gota 5y ago
This is in line with my (admittedly not well researched) theory of why 'many primitive cultures built pyramids': a square-based pyramid is the most stable structure that you can build to be really high. Columns, arches and metalworking are the things that allowed us to come up with something else, right?

jillesvangurp 5y ago

Supplement the list provided in the article by more modern boogeymen such as Negroes, Jews, Arabs, etc. and you have a nice explanation of recent history. I realize this may be deeply offensive to some of the readership here and emphasize that I don't look at the world in these terms. However, recent history is full of people that actually do demonize these groups of people; no matter how irrational that is. Nothing has changed here except our ability to find meaningless differences among groups of people with enough of a qualifier to split the world into "us" and "them". It's a natural reflex that transcends genetics, race, and other ways to qualify people as us and them. There have been plenty of experiments to suggest that this us and them reasoning does not really have to involve anything meaningful or substantial. E.g. the Stanford Prison Experiment is a great example where giving some people a uniform is enough to trigger the effect. IMHO Neanderthals did not actually disappear and the different subspecies of humanity simply merged to create a more fit offspring. Apparently humans carry enough neanderthal DNA to suggest that inter (sub)species breeding was a thing. Is that "us" or "them" or does that even mean anything? What do we call the humans without this DNA? Pure breads or ancestors? Is that better, worse, or just different? Is that even a thing? I.e. didn't those humans just die out? We like to dramatize things into epic battles, fights, etc. But life a few thousand years ago was brutal and very much survival of the fittest biased. Apparently, humans with some neanderthal DNA were somewhat fitter and survived into modernity. No need to get judgemental about that.

jgilias 5y ago
We should be careful not to chastise people from the past from the viewpoint of our comfy and safe lives. It's easy to sneer at our ability to divide people into 'us' versus 'them' over meaningless differences, when it's not you worrying about a night raid where you get scalped and your wife raped.
- moate 5y ago
  Meh. The vast majority of people subscribed to some religion or another and all the major religions say don't do rape or murder. I think it's reasonable to point out the moral failings of the past relative to their own morality. Seems perfectly reasonable to say "these people did bad things". If you want to then go a step further and say "they did bad things because reasons" that's fine, but the bad things were still done and pretending that providing some context justifies it is just as flawed an analysis as saying it doesn't. The world is nuanced AF.

emmanueloga_ 5y ago

"people from other communities" ... from other communities? How about just "people".

rebuilder 5y ago
That's true, but generally you don't see a community systematically slaughter, enslave and torture people they consider part of their community. Prison comes close, but note that usually prisoners are seen as outcasts.

wolverine876 5y ago

One interpretation of the origin of such monsters, from Beowulf: That bloodshed, for that Cain slew Abel, the Eternal Lord avenged: no joy had he of that violent deed, but God drove him for that crime far from mankind. Of him all evil broods were born, ogres and goblins and haunting shapes of hell, and the giants too, that long time warred with God - for that he gave them their reward. The original Old English text refers to the monsters as eotenas ond ylfe ond orcneas, swylce gigantas, and other translations seem to disagree on their meaning; however, orcneas meant evil spirits, according to the Oxford English Dictionary and to Tolkien (who was a leading scholar of Old English in his day job).[0] (I assume you are not saying that "people from other communities" are actually monsters, but referring to historical ignorance.) [0] If you can access the OED, see the entry for orc.

rebuilder 5y ago
I'm saying that people historically sometimes act like monsters when they meet people from other communities. Enslavement. Pillaging. Murder. Rape. Salting the fields. Etc. etc. etc.