Here’s some interesting Sunday reading for you, on why we humans invented monsters, by Paul A. Trout, professor emeritus at Montana State University:

According to [anthropologist David E.] Jones (what follows is a condensed summary of a complex argument), ancient primates evolved alarm calls to identify each of the three predators, with each call triggering the defensive response appropriate to the nature of the attack mode of the specific predator. Jones calls this predator-recognition template the “snake/raptor/cat complex.” This complex is the source of what Jones refers to as the “ brain dragon.” The brain dragon emerged when our apelike ancestors left the trees to walk on the ground. rather suddenly, the relatively small brain of Australopithecus had to process a lot of information about many new forms of predators and develop new alarms calls and strategic responses to them. Faced with information overload, the brain of Australopithecus resorted to lumping information into manageable and memorable chunks. As a result, the cat, the snake, and the raptor were merged into a hybrid creature that had the salient predatory features of each: the face of a feline, the body of a snake, and the talons of a raptor. This is the hybrid “monster” that came to be known as the “dragon.”

Hmmmm…

There’s much more over there. Happy Sunday Monster Reading, everyone!

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Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader’s HOLIDAY SALE – 30% of all books – goes through December.

• Nearly related and hopefully interesting aside from our very latest publication, Uncle John’s 24-KARAT-GOLD Bathroom Reader:

“Flap-dragon” is a 16th-century game of trying to eat hot raisins from a bowl of burning brandy.

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