Homo Necans: Man the Killer

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American Meat Institute advertisement: Life, 25 October 1943 (Gallery of Graphic Design)

The absence of a predatory instinct in the great ape's genetic makeup was always going to be a problem once the descent from the trees to the forest floor had taken place. Paleolothic man compensated for this lack by displacing patterns of inter-species aggression and redirecting them toward other species. Thus was born hunting, a conduct in which the characteristics of an equal are projected upon the prey, which thus becomes an "enemy". Killing your enemy is OK. From animal sacrifice, in turn, is born religion.

This is the thesis of Walter Burkert in his profound study of ancient Greek myth and religion, Homo Necans: the Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth (1992).

Homo Necans means man the killer. Short sentence. Capital offense, sans the tiresome guilt and punishment bits.

You might say that's putting a fine point on it. Or then again you might say, well, that's just connecting the dots.

Swift & Company advertisement: Good Housekeeping, 1 July 1948 (Gallery of Graphic Design)

Making the crucial jump from "sacrificial ritual with its tension between encountering death and affirming life, its external form consisting of preparations, a frightening central moment, and restitution," to the altar and thence the slaughterhouse, Walter Burkert contends, enabled man to become the powerful dominant creature he might never have become had he stuck with patterns of scavenging or gathering vegetation to obtain sustenance. Hard cheese for those other species, thus doomed to the desolate eternal fate of being our chattel, our food supply... and otherwise of little interest so long as they stay out of our way.

"Nourishment, order and civilized life are born of their antithesis: the encounter with death. Only homo necans can become homo sapiens."

Swift & Company advertisement: Life, 24 July 1939 (Gallery of Graphic Design)