Discussion Group Report

Richard Leakey, in The Origin of Humankind , defines consciousness as self-awareness. Each of us experiences life through the medium of consciousness. It is so powerful that it is impossible to imagine our existence without it.

Mind is:

The source of sense of self, private or shared with others.

A channel for reaching worlds beyond material objects, through imagination.

What can a conscious entity do for itself that an unconscious simulation of it can't? Organisms need to predict the future, but computers also have this ability. Oxford University zoologist Richard Dawkins says, "perhaps consciousness arises when the brain's simulation of the world becomes so complete that it must include a model of itself." Leakey takes the evolutionary point-of-view that consciousness conferred survival benefits and was the product of natural selection. Language is a tool of communication, but it is also a further means by which mental reality is honed.

Not only the size, but also the organization, of the hominid brain changed through evolution. Both the brains of apes and of humans are organized on the same basic pattern with one important difference: in apes the occipital lobe in the back of the brain is larger than the frontal lobes while in humans this pattern is reversed.

Our gradually unfolding consciousness changed us into a new kind of animal, one that sets arbitrary standards of behavior based upon what one considers to be right or wrong.

The harsh reality is that the questions archaeologists face about our ancestors' level of consciousness during the past 2.5 million years may be unanswerable because of the difficulties of obtaining evidence. However, one human activity from the prehistoric record, deliberate burial of the dead, is redolent of human consciousness. It shows an awareness of death, and thus an awareness of self. The first evidence of deliberate burial is of a Neanderthal a little more than 100,000 years ago.

Before 100,000 years ago there is no evidence of any kind of ritual that might betray consciousness, nor is there evidence of any art. The absence of such evidence does not definitively prove the absence of consciousness, nor can it be adduced in support of its existence. Modern humans became like us with respect to consciousness when they spoke like us and experienced the self as we do. The first sure evidence of this is in the art of Europe and Africa along with elaborate burial from about 35,000 years ago.

Every human society has an origin myth, the most fundamental story of all. Ever since reflective consciousness burned brightly in the human mind, mythology and religion have been a part of human history. Consciousness is a social tool for understanding the behavior of others by modeling it on one's own feelings. It is natural that in our myths we attribute these same motives to important non-human aspects of the world. Human minds are connected across millennia by an awareness of self and an awe at the miracle of life.