Same here, last year I devoured tons of writing on mimetic theory. And now I'm moving on to think about how we reconcile mimetic theory with theories of origin of consciousness, so this article was quite useful.
Where I would push back slightly on your comment: what's described in the article isn't scapegoating in the Girardian sense of the word. Because if when a man kills multiple others, then is killed for doing so, he actually is guilty (and a scapegoat isn't). But... it is likely rather the source of the development of scapegoating.
I think that scapegoating then develops when there is chaos in a society that isn't caused by the actions of an individual or the individual responsible can't be discovered. These primitive humans has seen already that violence/chaos can be stopped by putting an end to the cause of it, such as in the case of a violent man. There's chaos, there must be a cause, so who do we blame? Violá, our scapegoat.
Where I would push back slightly on your comment: what's described in the article isn't scapegoating in the Girardian sense of the word. Because if when a man kills multiple others, then is killed for doing so, he actually is guilty (and a scapegoat isn't). But... it is likely rather the source of the development of scapegoating.
I think that scapegoating then develops when there is chaos in a society that isn't caused by the actions of an individual or the individual responsible can't be discovered. These primitive humans has seen already that violence/chaos can be stopped by putting an end to the cause of it, such as in the case of a violent man. There's chaos, there must be a cause, so who do we blame? Violá, our scapegoat.