Sacrifice and Evolutionary Incentive: Epigenetic Applications of the Ritual

Nowadays in paleoanthropology it becomes more and more evident that the process of encephalopathy has guided our evolutionary line and that it can be investigated following two main strands of interpretation: the one based on selective mechanisms, which act on large numbers and in a completely random way, and the strand that constitutes the cornerstone of the Darwinian perspective on the evolution of life; or the one that is articulated according to a philosophical approach, aimed at formulating a "law of complexity-consciousness," which, following Teilhard de Chardin's hypothesis, highlights the possible action, within the evolutionary mechanisms, of loadbearing lines of development, responsible for the "formation of increasingly complex and cerebralized structures."¹ The first paradigm is considered the most suitable, from the scientific point of view, to perform the explanatory function for natural phenomena, empirically observable and the object of analysis on the data that emerge from them, while the second examines the complexity of human existence, thus removing it from the mere materialistic representation, attributed to it by an abstract evolutionism. This second paradigm certainly does not intend to neglect the assumptions of scientific research, but rather to show that, for living beings, every increase in complexity implies an increase in the degree of consciousness. Therefore, the evolutionary development, immediately observable in the biological perspective, also operates in the psychological and cultural perspective.

The increasingly rapid succession of discoveries in the scientific field—supported by the material evidence provided by the most sophisticated technological instruments of analysis available to us today (computed tomography [CT], magnetic resonance imaging, etc.)—seems to confirm the hermeneutic significance of philosophical and anthropological interpretations, until now too often omitted from research on hominization.

Without claiming to be exhaustive, this reflection is oriented toward the multidisciplinarity of investigative approaches. It highlights new interpretative cues that emerge from the juxtaposition of disciplines that are only apparently distant from each other, but are concretely connected and complementary, such as genetics and paleoanthropology. At first glance they are not very appropriate if simply extrapolated from the riverbed to the discipline that hosts them. But they prove fruitful, in particular, in bringing into play some of the hypotheses formulated by anthropological studies on the origin of man. Their hermeneutical values can now finally face the test of fossil discoveries and the latest scientific evidence that emerge from them, to support or disprove theories on the process of hominization from time to time arising over the last one hundred and fifty years.

Teilhard de Chardin has already claimed that it is necessary to keep in mind that "matter is not the stable foundation of the world,"² since it expresses only the sensible form of knowledge, the physical explanation of phenomena, susceptible to being accused of materialistic and positivist reductionism.³

Therefore, the author does not rely on the simple knowledge of the elements that make up everything; its anti-reductionist methodology is aimed at elevating "above all the synthetic, holistic aspect of research, proclaiming the legitimacy of taking into consideration scientifically the dimension of complexity," which better highlights "the orthogenetic line of evolution,"⁴ which is the existence of an organization oriented toward matter in which, if on the one hand randomness undoubtedly plays a role, on the other hand, evolution cannot be based on purely deterministic criteria, which are not very convincing even on a probabilistic level, since, in order to heuristically exhaust all the possible probabilities of development subjected to selection, the evolutionary time necessary to reach the level of "complexity-consciousness" of human beings would have had to be much longer than that actually found.

Although the American current of thought called "intelligent design" has tried to bend the concept of Teilhardian complexity in order to validate the supposed scientific nature of creationism, the French philosopher and paleoanthropologist adopts an eminently scientific perspective and considers it evident that in nature the evolutionary development is oriented toward a process of progressive encephalization and that, in our clade, has expressed all its potential. The analyses presented here suggest that something must have intervened to guide this process, and...