The hypothesis that the first law can be found in the social contract is untenable. Early Modern contractualism imagines society as an artificial construct born from a pact among isolated individuals who renounce the state of nature. Yet this view is implausible: humans, like other primates, are inherently gregarious, and there is no evidence of an evolutionary detour in which they lived as solitary beings before “contracting” society. By analogy with language and grammar, society necessarily precedes legal rules: just as grammar codifies an existing language, law emerges only after social life is established. The European social contract narrative also reinforced a civilizational hierarchy, portraying Europeans as “adult peoples” who had transcended nature, while relegating Amerindians and Africans to “childlike” or “savage” stages. This myth justified colonial domination, genocide, and slavery, later recast in theories of self-domestication and Social Darwinism. In reality, there are societies without legal norms, and norms are dispensable to explain human collectives.