Fear of the Dark

As a scholar of comparative religion drawn primarily to the study of mythology, I've often wondered about the precise moment or apparatus in human development that led to our species' capacity for elaborate, abstract narrative. Paul Trout's  Deadly Powers: Animal Predators and the Mythic Imagination (2011) broaches that very subject and takes an innovative, as well as perhaps controversial, stance on the question. Though not without its flaws, his approach is fascinating and it touches on two earlier blog posts. In this post, I'm going to summarize the book, give a critique, and show how it connects to some prominent narratives in popular culture.

The story begins with the fate suffered by many of our species' ancestors:

Put simply, as fossil evidence shows, millions of years ago, early hominids in the human line (Homo ergaster, Homo habilis, Homo erectus), easy prey for eagles, big cats, and so forth. The graphic, brutal image above is based on the perfect fit between sabertooth tiger teeth and holes found in early human skulls.

Trout argues that early human ancestors developed first mimetic, then vocal, then linguistic, then storytelling methods for evading predators. If these techniques would have aided hominids in escaping predation, natural selection would ensure that those behaviors increased over successive generations. Trout writes, "At the hearth fire, perhaps deep within a cave, our ancestors imitated predators to control and conquer their fear of them. By imitating, mimicking, simulating, and impersonating the very animals that frightened them, they were able to imbue themselves with greater resolve, more courage, heightened physical strength, and a more intense sense of group solidarity" (127). This, according to Trout, was the birth of human storytelling.

Over time, scenes like this:

Become scenes like this:

The imagination, elaboration, and mystification of predators was also the birth of another tell-tale narrative trope: the monster. Trout spends early chapters drawing interesting parallels between famous mythic monsters and the prehistoric beasts known to hunt human ancestors. The dragon, for instance, combines raptor, snake, and feline body parts, while eagles, snakes, and leopards are very likely candidates for animals that hunted early humans. Besides that, most monsters tend to have prominent teeth and claws, which ancient predators of humans would also have possessed. Thus, it's no wonder monsters frighten us: the monster template is based on predator-recognition alarms wired into our brains and genes. Having blogged previously about monsters, I found Trout's discussion interesting. If he's right, he might not be far off in asserting that real-life "monsters" in the form of predators "spurred the development of the human imagination" and made humans the species we are, with the big, imaginative brains we possess (136).

Trout cites myths from around the world that talk about how, at the beginning of time, there was a monster that had to be defeated before humans could inhabit the earth. The Vedic Hinduism of India, Babylonian myth of Mesopotamia, the !Kung of Africa, Aborigines of Australia, and Cree of North America are just few examples, showing the presence of such a myth across the globe. Trout believes this wide dispersal of the narrative demonstrates it is fundamental to human storytelling and reflects a genetic memory of when our species overcame predators to become the dominant life-form on the planet.

Trout's insight reminded me of some popular culture media that make the same point. The most recent iterations of Godzilla and King Kong (as part of an attempted cinematic "monsterverse" to rival Marvel's movies) state that these beasts ruled the world long before humans and might be emerging to retake it.

(As a sidenote, that is a marked departure from the origin of Godzilla, who in the original Japanese Gojira (1954) is decidedly a creature of modern times, created by American atomic bomb testing. I'm also not a tremendous fan of Godzilla's look in these films.)

Those familiar with the Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel storylines know that in that mythology, demons ruled the world first and were expelled over time by the first humans. Monsters and vampires persist as the hybrid progeny of those first demons.

Behind all that is the mythology of H.P. Lovecraft, who wrote many interconnected, intertextual tales of the horrible "Old Ones" who ruled the world before humans and will one day return to re-stake their claim. The most famous of these Old Ones is the cephalopodic Cthulhu.

Could it be that this line of narrative is re-enacting the ancient human triumph over predators?

As with other books purporting to trace an evolutionary origin in the deep past for a human behavior, Trout's claims are at best suggestive, but not definitive. Though he's convinced me that response to predation must have had something to do with the development of the human capacity and tendency for myth-making, it might be an overstatement to claim it is the reason for such a complex cognitive process. Also, selecting myths from here and there across the world, while interesting and certainly revealing, is also difficult to do without risking loss of context.

Those shortcomings aside, Trout does build on some solid foundations in evolutionary psychology, particularly speculations about the development of human cognition. I have blogged about some of these points before, particularly in relation to the origin of religiosity. Namely, those individuals who perceived the world around as made up of "agents" (i.e., anything that moves by itself) and further determines these agents to have "mind mechanisms" (i.e., desires and intentions) like themselves, will have an advantage in detecting and avoiding predators. Over-detection (for instance, getting spooked and running away from a falling rock, thinking it was a leopard) is far safer than under-detection. Over time, due to selection, these traits would be prevalent and would lead to our species perceiving agents and minds throughout the environment even when they do not exist. As a result of this evolution of abstract thinking, the argument goes, our minds create all kinds of fantastic fictional characters to populate the world, such as ghosts, giants, demons, gods, elves, vampires, etc. Scott Attan, author of In Gods We Trust: the Evolutionary Landscape of Religion, calls the brain's tendency to generate so many "false positives" the "Tragedy of Cognition."

As I remarked earlier regarding the origin of myth-making, it seems rather simplistic to attribute something as complex as religious behavior to one natural selection factor. However, Trout's hypothesis does suggest reasons for why monsters and horror stories have persisted beyond the point when we are preyed upon regularly: they're still good for a jolt of endorphins and for social cohesion. It's also good, as a recent NPR article shows, for dealing with the wide-range of fears and anxieties the modern world throws at us.

One of the things I suppose I enjoyed about Trout's book is that it reinforced a notion I've held for sometime: It's the dark things of the world and (more importantly) our reactions to them that make us who we are.

In conclusion, in 1992 British heavy metal act Iron Maiden came out with the song"Fear of the Dark," which could have been the soundtrack for Trout's book. It's linked below, for those who are interested.

Until next time, take care.