Why Are So Many Monsters Hybrids? | Hacker News Reader

Why Are So Many Monsters Hybrids?

nautil.us

43 pointsdnetesn14 comments

My gf's brother pointed out to me that this seemed to be a major driver of Kosher rules/Kashrut (and maybe Halal too? I don't know much about religions).

Apparently those Bronze Age guys were really into taxonomic orthodoxy, so animals that violated their world view (e.g. live in the water but don't swim; cloven hoof but don't chew cud) had to be shunned.

Though is it that different today? Everybody seems to have a section of knowledge where they plug their ears and say "na na I'm not listening..."

Regarding Kosher at least, I think it had more to do with health than taxonomy.

The birds that were forbidden tended to be scavengers (such as vultures). These could carry diseases. Likewise, the main livestock they were forbidden from eating were pigs, which could present a health hazard at that time. They were also forbidden from eating most insects except locusts, probably for similar reasons.

I would disagree with the taxonomic interpretation mainly because there are a couple examples where I don't think it makes sense. For instance, pigs were "beasts of the field". They weren't in any way challenging to the Jewish taxonomy. Catfish also weren't challenging. They were fish (that is, basically, they lived in water). But they don't have scales, so they're not kosher (they're also bottom-feeders, so again could carry diseases if prepared incorrectly).

The health interpretation also extends to preparation rules. Animals must be slaughtered and bled out. This was likely to reduce risk of blood-borne diseases. Animals found dead also cannot be eaten, reducing risk of eating diseased meat.

Of course, these interpretations aren't mutually exclusive. I just don't see much support for the taxonomic interpretation aside from the fact that of course the regulations classify animals as fit to eat based on certain characteristics.

I'm also only familiar with Kosher rules, so can't comment about how the taxonomic interpretation might apply to other dietary rules.

A strange story I read was in the earliest polytheistic era its an evolutionary economic advantage for an entire region or culture to enforce a level of economic protectionism on villages. Stops one village from gaining total economic ascendancy over the region. Its an inoculation against civil war, we could kill them and take their pigs, but we can't eat pigs, and since we're not in economic competition we're not much richer than they are so there's no guarantee they won't end up killing us and taking our cows, which they can't eat... Sort of pre-history zoning rules. Naturally things look weird later on if one tribe takes over the whole region, much like it would be weird to have a city zoned entirely for nothing but an endless sea of McDonalds restaurants.

> Anthropologist David Wengrow argues that hybrid monsters proliferated during the Bronze Age, because new trade routes and cultural mixing elicited psychological anxiety. Creating monsters is a way of channeling our cultural and political fears into tangible forms, into objects of loathing and dread.

Or most stories were written and/or propagated by entertainers (including parents or babysitters who want the kids to shut up and sit in one place) and it's cool to hear about Bellerophon defeating a superbeast. Note that many monsters are just big and super powered, like the Erymanthian Boar. But in this case, it's fun to see if the hero can take on a beast with the intelligence of a man and the bloodlust and strength of a bull. These beasts are also strange, which makes for a fun and surprising story.

Compare to the Super-Skrull, a Fantastic Four bad guy whose powers are (basically) the powers of the Fantastic Four combined:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super-Skrull

I mean, we can peel the onion back another layer and talk about whether it's entertaining because of some widespread psychological issue, but I think Occam's Razor would indicate "because it's fun" as a valid answer.

Wengrow did write a whole book about this. He wasn't just speculating freshly when asked by the author of this article.

https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10125.html

>I mean, we can peel the onion back another layer and talk about whether it's entertaining because of some widespread psychological issue, but I think Occam's Razor would indicate "because it's fun" as a valid answer.

No, it really isn't, and this is a gross misunderstanding of the function of these stories. They weren't created explicitly as entertainment in the way comic books are. Jack and Stan were not claiming to be relating true tales of the gods or the past.

These stories weren't created "for fun" anymore than the tales of the Greek pantheon of gods or tales of saints and miracles from medieval Christian Europe. They were actual beliefs of actual people, they weren't faking it. Yours is a very modern perspective removed from the cultures that created these tales.

Well, someone made up the story of the pegasus. They didn't see a pegasus and just make up a poem about it.

Even if we restrict the elaboration and propagation of these stories to true believers, these memes are subject to selection effects. Entertainment value is surely a competitive advantage for a long-lived folk tale.

Oral histories are a big game of telephone. Ever hear a bunch of fishermen talk about their brother in laws cousins friends legendary catch?

These stories were passed down word of mouth, so you'd have to expect that by the time Pegasus had wings it'd passed through a number of people. Further, you have to understand these people had a basic understanding of the world around them. It's not inconceivable that they saw these types of things without the opportunity to investigate further. So whatever they think they saw is what becomes fact. Pegasus could come from some dude that was looking at a horse coming over the horizon and thought for sure that thing had wings. Told some buddies about this crazy horse over some wine, and before you know it the Pegasus is a real thing you ask for when you're 16.

I think the author is reading too much into this. Even in ancient times it was known that hybrids were frequently larger than the parents. Take Ligers for example (lion tiger hybrid).

People were probably more familiar with animal husbandry than today, so it makes sense to exaggerate that natural tendency to make somewhat believable monsters.

I don't think it had anything to do with xenophopia or "category violation" . The Earth has all kinds of weird shit like flying squirrels and humans

I think it's just easier/better storytelling to use shorthand descriptions based on things people may already have seen. Griffins, Chimeras, and Sphinxes are easier to picture in the mind's eye than Azathoth, Yog-Sothoth, and Shub-Niggurath.

Isn't some of this just the difficulty of describing something unique?

If you asked me to describe what the aliens from the Alien/Aliens movies looked like, I'd completely fail. If you asked me to describe the alien from Predator, on the other hand, it'd be fairly easy. The Predator is a guy in a costume so I could just describe the differences.

Perhaps the recent Alien movies use CGI or something, but the original Alien from Alien (in the adult form) was the Nigerian actor Bolaji Badejo in a suit.

Interesting that the author references Vishnu, since Krishna (an avatar of Vishnu) refers to "the mixing of the castes" as evil in the Bhagavad Gita. And yes, this evil is some mixture of existential and sociological, i.e., religious.

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