As scary as monsters are, they’ve all the time captivated us. From chimeras and hydras to bunyips and golems, creatures have emerged from our imaginations all through historical past and throughout cultures. As we speak, they explode onto our cinema screens with unbelievable regularity. Given how scary monsters may be, it appears paradoxical that we maintain making them. In actual fact, they’re truly crucial to us, and are deeply rooted in our evolutionary historical past and psychology.
Monsters are the fantastical descendants of our co-evolution with predatory animals: they’re wired into our neurocircuitry. Snakes, for instance, had been a few of our ancestors’ first lethal…