I’ve previously delved into two myths presented by the standard model of evolutionary science: the myth of the weaponized ape, and the myth of the kinless caveman. These myths are totally without any kind of anthropoligical backing, but they are assumed to be true by most “scientifically minded” people in modern society, even religious ones. They descend from a confusion about violence: that human aggression only differs from animal combat in degree, not in kind.
In reality, human aggression is modified by reciprocal object usage (ROBA). The threat of an object entering combat renders the weapon a wildcard; but one’s capacity to introduce bigger and badder weaons leads to an incentive to escalate to extremes, producing an apocalyptic level of violence in humans that animals never have to deal with.
Because of the capacity to use objects in combat, aggression is ever-present in human society. Combat might come from anywhere at any time, and without the right information, one fears they will be caught off guard. This produces a constant recursive loop in the individual, which runs fulltime as it attempts to face the crisis of violence, but can never fully resolve.
This is a simple cipher that differentiates human from animal combat. Without it, we have no clear break from animals. Modern evolutionary science, founded on modern synthesis, sees this as a feature. It allows scientists to write endlessly on how our language comes from animal communication, spring cleaning comes from primate grooming practices, homosexuality comes from ape dominance, etc.
None of this is fully verifiable because no primate has ever been observed crossing the threshold from their thing to our thing. All of it is mere extrapolation.
And yet, despite its unverifiability, modern synthesis has the effect of producing an entire cottage industry of mythology. I’ve listed two above. Another is the myth of the sacred hunt: primitive man first hunted animals for sustenance, but through some gradual process involving increased brain size, group size, weapon innovations, etc., we began to treat the hunt as a sacred affair, which became ancient religion.
By contrast, ROBA provides a sort of “big bang” moment for human culture. At the onset of ROBA (if there ever was even a beginning to it), the recursive loop produces all things human such kinship, myth, language, religion, art, psychology, etc. ROBA sees any kind of gradualism from animals to humans as immediately suspect, because no human behaviors are seen in any transitory state in primates. Their behavior has remained unchanged; while ours changes every second.
ROBA would therefore look at the myth of the ritual hunt and say, “Ritual was already present in the hunt.” Because ritual can’t gradually evolve, we have to look at the purpose for the ritual hunt: blood atonement. Whether the caveman consecrated his red-blooded prey to atone for previous injustices, or he consecrated it for spilling its blood alone, or the consecration is saved in a sort of blood savings account to atone for his future or potential sins; the order of events doesn’t matter. All these modalities are present in all ancient societies. All we care about is the purpose of consecration itself: he uses the animal blood to pay for human blood. It’s as simple as that. The meal is a communion with the god, the arbiter of blood debt.
This is why red is the first color term after black and white, and it’s always etymologically connected to “blood” (or “earth” which acts as a holding house for blood debt/credit). The communication sciences see this as an arbitrary matter. “We simple thought red was more useful to think about that, say, blue.” But this only credits the first humans as mere utilitarian animals. We were far more than this, infinity more, and always have been.
ROBA is a potent weapon that can be easily used against Synthetic Mythology. I predict it’d be an easy way to win a debate. I’d kill to try it out.