How does GA differ and expand upon Girard

The comment below is very good and especially interesting for me is the last few paragraphs (on identification with the one super-protohuman), which puts things in a way I hadn't quite seen them put before. To put it briefly, for Gans there is a scene and a sign, and we don't have either with Girard, who posits a "mechanism." Imagine everyone approaching and grasping for some central object of desire, realizing (tacitly, "vaguely") that this very movement makes it impossible for any of them to possess it, and then converting their grasp into a gesture--a gesture pointing to the object and indicating one has ceased to approach it. We have a sign, a scene the basis of ritual and everything that follows. There's nothing close to that with Girard. There are interesting discussions to be had on what makes this event possible and what it would look like (always keeping things as minimal as possible) but they all have to come back to it.