That being said, I’ve ordered this book and my bored mind happily awaits the moment it gets to wrap itself around something that isn’t entirely fiction (I’ve been in a rut as of late).

I AM has stated that this change is not Darwinian. That was my first concern. If the change was evolutionary it would take hundreds of thousands or millions of years to become common in the world population. No such change could be spread in 4,000 years.

The alternative that it is learned is problematic as well. It means each of us have to learn it. In my childhood I don’t ever remembering anyone telling me that god would not literally appear or speak to me audibly. It was only when those things didn’t happen and I asked that I was told that god didn’t always speak or appear. It seems that I was constantly manipulated to remain open to the possibility of hearing or seeing god.

Cultural evolution is much quicker than physical but a world wide cultural change in hundreds of years is also a problem. Surely there are civilizations on earth more primitive than say the middle east of 4000 years ago. Surely we could see if members of those societies fit the pre-change pattern.

I read a book a long time ago, memorable as much for its title as for its content. Julian Jaynes’ The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind proposes the theory that humans developed conscious thought in biblical or Homeric times, not in distant pre-history. Ancient humans were aware only of the thoughts in the left hemisphere of their brains as they performed the day to day functions of their lives. The deep, poetic and mystical thoughts coming from their “artsy” and “big-picture” right brains were perceived as foreign, not coming from within themselves. Instead of consciousness, they heard voices from the gods. This theory, among other virtues, handily explains why I don’t ever hear such voices. And I suppose it says something about those among us who still do.

As is true of so many other fascinating topics, I will never know enough even to be ignorant in the field of evolutionary psychology. But my own limited conscious thought on the subject leads me to believe that Jaynes is wrong. The differences that he perceives as the growth of the conscious mind are better explained by the greater and more detailed evidence left behind as history unfolds. And the distinctions he makes are not the ones that strike me as obvious. He describes Homer’s Iliad as being created by a different mind than the Odyssey, and Genesis coming from a more ancient mind than Revelations. Nonetheless, I find the idea intriguing, even haunting, and it has helped to form a fundamental part of my perspective on humans and their history.

Although I’ve loved reading history for years, for many of those years I’ve shied away from ancient history, seeing those long ago civilizations much as Jaynes describes pre-conscious man. These people, or, I should say, the evidence they left of their existence, were boring, flat, one-dimensional. The kingdoms of Egypt or Assyria seem to me so foreign, so mundane. Simple-minded and ruthless autocrats greedily manipulate ignorant and weak peasants and slaves. Where there is evidence of deeper thought, it is so strange, so mystical, so non-sensical. These ancient hordes that created huge works of splendor did so, it seems, with no understanding of the meaning or worth of the pyramids, the sphinx, the hanging gardens. It is as if they were driven by an instinct akin to that of insect civilizations. The literature is beautiful and haunting, containing myths and fables that still appeal to the imagination after thousands of years, but where it makes sense at all it is a dream-like fantasy.

And then the world wakes up. Out of this Salvadore Dali dream-world of parting seas, tumbling walls, sirens songs and giant wooden horses, suddenly there appears a man telling a story, a man like you or I, telling a story we might tell, telling it like we might tell it (or like we would like to). In Athens in the fifth century BC, Herodotus of Hellicarnassus relates his “enquiries” of the Greek war with Persia, and human consciousness arises from the mists….

I was interested in his positing transitional phases from King to Dead King to God. The King’s authority would be imbued in a statue and people would perceive the likeness to speak. This could shed light on the idolatry that lies at the heart of most religions.

Where Jaynes lost me was when he attempted to retrofit his theories to cover all sorts of supernatural phenomena like UFOs

Neanderthals are relatives of homo sapiens. They are on the same family tree. The path of the neanderthal is an evolutionary dead-end (it is still quite possible their extinction was due in some part to being bred out of existence by being absorbed by the competing ancestors -cro-magnon, etc.- or by annihilation by competition or even disease).

My guess would be primarily the technological advantages enjoyed by cro-magnon man made hunting for survival impossible for the neanderthals. They would have dwindled in numbers and relocated and quickly died due to lack of breeding and harsh environments. But I would imagine there were other factors as well.

The point I was even making in bringing up brain sizes was that there are many ways nature tends to diverge genetically. It is obvious the forebrain in humans is the most recent and most advanced part of our brains. My guess would be that atheists have smaller “god centers” than very religious people. Also, gay people tend to have large “god centers” as well. There are many duties that that part of the brain is responsible for. And right now it is still genetically competitive whether or not you have a large spiritual part in your brain. Memes are still consumable by religious and non-religious alike. we can all adapt and survive.