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We all understand Hell from dreams, in dreams we can know that escape is impossible and the prospect is frightening if a little unclear.
Night terrors are very frightening for a child; they are also terrifying for a parent. I will never forget my son looking straight through me saying “They’re still here!” even if he could not and still can’t tell me what they were. I too have vague recollections of nightmares in which something supremely terrifying is out there, getting closer and escape is impossible. I assume such nightmares are tapping into something very deep in our brains, a propensity to believe in terrifying things which would no doubt be very useful in any animal which could be hunted. It is also conceivable that this is some kind of race memory that has its origin in the deep history of our species, in the warfare of Stone Age bands.
What could be more frightening than being hunted down by strange adults who wanted you dead and were stronger, faster and smarter than you were? Recent archaeological evidence has shown this is quite plausible as large collections of human skeletons have been found all with Neolithic stone axe wounds to the skull with all ages and sexes present except young women and older girls. Genocide isn’t a recent invention; raids for the purpose of killing competitors and taking women as wives are probably the original purpose of war.
Since the creation of states war has lost its primary purpose for all but the top leadership. No man should ever join an aggressive war for this simple reason, the risk of death is still very much there but the opportunity to come out of it with two new wives and a pig have gone. The purpose of human warfare was to kill or drive off competitors, take their territory and make off and make out with their wives and daughters. From the point of view of a member of a small band of related people it makes sense to join together to attack a similar sized or smaller group using the element of surprise. A slight numerical advantage could easily be transformed into a significant advantage after an initial surprise attack. The advantage is always going to be with the attackers who leave their women and children behind and attack prepared, well armed and pumped up with adrenaline. We have seen it numerous times in Hollywood because the tactics are so obvious whether you are Vikings or cowboys and Indians. Attack at night, use fire, shout and scream and cause panic, kill the men, butcher the children and carry off the women and anything useful and valuable you could carry.
So there we have Hell. Flames. Shouts and screams of the dying and the attackers. No escape. Pain. Death and perhaps a fate worse than death as you are in the hands of the adversary.
Satan n.
the Devil; Lucifer.
[Old English via Late Latin and Greek from Hebrew satan, literally ‘adversary’, from satan ‘oppose, plot against’]
Surely we all have ancestors who were victims of this as well as perpetrators. Naturally we can expect to see that there is evidence of Viking blood around the place, those who triumphed in such skirmishes would naturally have more surviving children than those who did not take part or were victims. I can see the Viking look in my son. But it is also obvious that all of us would be descended from the odd frightened boy who escaped and a lot more terrified girls who did not. Is this perhaps the origin of the fear of a noisy chaos with flames, the impossibility of escape and the sinister threat of strangers whose motives we could not know but knew to fear? It has often been said that war is hell but is that not entirely the wrong way around?
The Stone Age would be a time when most people would have experienced violence several times in their life. In parts of the world in which people still live in bands these small scale wars for women and livestock still sometimes occur, which is why your mental picture of a tribesman features a spear and a shield.
Studies of chimpanzees and dolphins show that war is not a uniquely human trait. Males that can communicate and co-operate can use those advantages to gain territory, access to females and so on, which they could never manage when acting alone. It is very likely that our ancestors have been sporadically terrifying each other by killing men and carrying away nubile women and girls for at least several tens of thousands of generations. Surely that is long enough to bury fears in our brains.
We are naturally fearful of heights; we display far more fear when looking down from a ten metre high cliff than we do when driving along at high speed in a car. One fear is something our brains have evolved to appreciate the other one is one we have to use logic to tell us that there is a lurking danger and the potential for catastrophic injury or death. We have a built in apprehension of snakes and big hairy snarling beasts with mouths full of sharp teeth, that fear is built into our psyche but we don’t have the same built in appreciation of the dangers of addictive drugs or overeating which are today far more likely to kill us than lions and tigers and bears.
Is it really that much of a stretch to think that if a million generations can make tree climbing primates afraid of snakes and falls and leopards it would be possible that tens of thousands of generations exposure to the very real terror of death and a fate worse than death could make us prone to fear the flames and evil subtle beings which could be an attacking genocidal tribe or the horde of Beelzebub? With a built-in propensity to fear being powerless in the face of an attacking force of superior evil beings developed by direct experience of children cowering in fear as men attacked their homes intent on murder, rape and kidnap surely our species is wide open to have this pathway of terror exploited by a really sinister force: religion.
This isn’t the fear of the Vikings or the genocidal army of Joshua: it is the fear that terrified the Vikings. It goes way back into all our prehistories. What can you tell a child to protect them against the fear of having their home invaded, their father killed, their house set on fire and their mother taken away? Nothing. This is the source of the night terror. We are our own worst nightmares.