Invention of Weapons as Generator of Human Equality

Discussion

Olivier Auber:

"Dessalles puts forward strong arguments that suggests that the invention of weapons, even before the invention of fire, has been the Singularity that has triggered the explosion of our symbolic codes (Dessalles 2014). According to this theory, weaponry in its most prehistoric version, — that is our first technology —, would have made the social order based on physical domination brutally obsolete. For the first time, weapons would have allowed hominids to kill without risk, not only wild beasts, but above all: dominant peers.

“Once, for whatever reason, easy killing became possible among our hominid ancestors, the absolute right of the strongest instantaneously became obsolete.”

This political crisis would have put enormous stress on our species. From then on, individuals whose behavior seemed more adapted to survival in these dramatic conditions would have been selected. The selected individuals would have been those who proved their capability to both identify unexpected signs of danger, and to communicate them to peers by a hand gesture, a vocalization, and later by an increasingly articulated language.

As analysed by Dessalles, the language would have been our Evolutionarily Stable Strategy (ESS) to escape the political crisis triggered by the invention of weapons that has threaten the dominants. From then on, language would have overthrown the brute force to become our main daily activity, as well as the driving force that shapes our social structure." (https://www.academia.edu/16621395/Refounding_Legitimacy_Toward_a_Global_Immune_System