How did humans develop consciousness? When did humans first become aware of their internal lives? How did language shape our ability to understand ourselves and others?
In The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes proposes that consciousness emerged through cultural evolution rather than biological changes. He argues that the shift occurred as early humans developed more complex language and metaphorical thinking.
Continue reading to learn about the developments that, according to Jaynes, transformed humans into the self-aware beings we are today.
How Humans Developed Consciousness
How did humans develop consciousness? Jaynes contends that the complexity of the social world led to the emergence of consciousness. But importantly, he maintains that this shift was driven by culture rather than biology. While scientists have traditionally considered consciousness a result of natural selection, Jaynes disagrees. He argues the development of consciousness might have been aided by natural selection, since consciousness made people more adaptable, less impulsive, and better able to learn new decision-making skills—all useful traits for survival. However, he believes consciousness was primarily learned through language—a cultural shift that allowed people to experience and express an interior life and to narrate and remember their experiences—a key part of our sense of self.
| How Does Memory Shape Our Sense of Self? Research may support Jaynes’s contention that the ability to narrate and remember our experiences gets to the core of our sense of self. Psychologists studying the relationship between memory and self-concept explain how tightly these phenomena are interlinked. There are two kinds of memory. Episodic memory allows us to recall specific events from our past, while autobiographical memory weaves these events into a coherent life story. As such, autobiographical memory helps us form a self-concept—consider how “I am…” statements make you remember times when certain aspects of your self-image first emerged. These associations are so strong that some people with memory impairments can retain their sense of identity by remembering the language they use to describe themselves, even when they can no longer recall specific events from their past. |
Jaynes explains that consciousness is based on language. As our ancestors developed the ability to use language, they learned to express their thoughts and emotions. So, language gave them a more self-reflective and self-aware way of experiencing the world. As a result, humans developed consciousness gradually, likely over centuries. Jaynes thinks the changes may have occurred at different times in different parts of the world. He argues the shift occurred earlier in Mesopotamia than in Mesoamerica (which spans present-day Mexico and Central America) because social conditions in Mesopotamia provided the right circumstances for a new mentality to replace the old one.
(Shortform note: Jaynes isn’t the only scholar to focus on Mesopotamia as a key location in the evolution of human culture and cognition. Some historians say Mesopotamia is where human civilization first emerged, with the first cities, writing systems, and advanced technologies. The fertile lands along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers enabled the transition to agriculture and permanent settlements during the Neolithic Revolution. Plus, environmental factors like climate change required more organized irrigation and resource management—and drove the evolution of complex social structures, government bureaucracies, and class divisions. Mesopotamia is also where the earliest known form of writing, cuneiform, emerged around 3400 BCE.)
Although consciousness likely emerged at different times in different places, a few crucial changes always had to occur. We’ll explore each change in more detail next.
People Realized That Others Have Internal Lives
Jaynes argues that a crucial step in developing consciousness was recognizing, even subconsciously, that others have internal mental lives. As people learned to cope with complex societies, they could see that a stranger—even if that stranger looked a lot like them—spoke differently, behaved differently, and believed different things about the world than they did. Jaynes explains that this led naturally to the conclusion that there was something inside them to cause this distinct behavior. This notion implied the existence of an internal mind that drove people’s external behavior. People might have realized this consciously, or it might have been a subconscious assumption that they used to explain how strangers behaved.
People Recognized Their Own Internal Life, Too
Jaynes explains that, when humans realized that others have internal experiences, they could recognize that this applied to themselves, too. As humans became conscious, they gained abilities like self-awareness and the capacity for introspection (reflecting on their own thoughts and feelings). They also learned to imagine a future, reflect on the past, and make decisions based on their thoughts.
Jaynes says that as humans developed consciousness, they began to recognize different mental processes at work in their minds. One crucial distinction they learned to make was between consciousness itself (our general awareness of our own existence and experiences) and specific mental processes like perception (how we take in and process information from our senses). While these processes are closely related—after all, we’re conscious of what we perceive—they’re distinct: Perception happens automatically, like when your eyes adjust to bright light, while consciousness involves actively thinking about and interpreting our perceptions and experiences.
Understanding this distinction helped humans develop metacognition—the ability to think about their own thinking. They could now observe themselves making decisions, reflect on their thoughts, and analyze how they approached complex tasks. This self-awareness showed them that consciousness isn’t just a static state but an ongoing process that weaves together many different experiences, thoughts, and sensations.
They Developed a New Set of Mental Tools
As newly conscious humans began recognizing their internal lives, they also developed new mental skills and tools that expanded their conscious awareness and gave them new ways to navigate the complexities of the social world. Jaynes argues that consciousness itself emerged not through biological evolution but as a product of human culture—it’s not innate, but learned and passed down through generations within specific cultures.
One crucial tool in this cultural development was metaphorical language, where words and expressions generate mental images in the mind (like, for example, describing a challenge as an uphill climb). Such language helped people to understand and express abstract ideas. Jaynes proposes that as language evolves and becomes more complex, so does consciousness. As humans began using language to express abstract concepts and metaphorical ideas, their consciousness evolved to interpret and internalize these linguistic constructs. In other words, Jaynes contends that consciousness emerged from our ability to create metaphors to represent and understand the world.
The shift from concrete to abstract thinking through metaphorical language marked a significant step forward in human cognitive development and contributed to the emergence of other crucial elements of consciousness, including the following.
1. An Internal “Mind-Space”
Our ability to introspect involves looking at a metaphorical representation of our mind. Jaynes uses the term “internal mind-space” to describe this mental space where consciousness occurs. In the internal mind-space, inner experiences like thoughts and feelings play out, and we can reflect on these experiences. Using this metaphorical space enables us to examine different mental activities separately, like distinguishing between a memory, an emotion, and a plan for the future. In this way, metaphor plays a crucial role in helping us think about our own consciousness.
For example, when you see a beautiful sunset, your mind-space allows you to not just perceive the colors, but to transform that external sight into internal experiences: memories of other sunsets you’ve seen, feelings of awe or peace, or thoughts about sharing the moment with someone else.
2. An “Analog ‘I’”
The “analog ‘I’” is a sense of a self who acts as a protagonist observing and moving through a person’s mental space. This is Jaynes’s term for the metaphorical “self” that a person creates in their mind, allowing them to imagine themselves in different situations and to make decisions based on imagined outcomes. In other words, the analog “I” enables people to understand their place in the world, envision the likely consequences of their actions, and make choices. That means it’s an essential part of conscious decision-making and self-awareness.
3. The Skill of “Narratization”
Narratization is a process that enables people to string their experiences into coherent stories in their minds. Jaynes explains that this involves consciously bringing together various elements of past experiences into a coherent, consistent storyline. Having this narrative helps people to make sense of their experiences within the bounds of their worldview and beliefs. In other words, narratization helps us understand our reality by creating a consistent mental explanation of the events we experience and the ideas we have over time.
4. The Ability to Concentrate on or Suppress Thoughts
Concentration is focusing attention on thoughts, and suppression is ignoring unwanted thoughts; both are tools for people to direct and control what they’re thinking about. Jaynes contends that as people first became aware of their inner thoughts and experiences, they learned to concentrate on some thoughts and suppress others. They also learned to distinguish between their own thoughts and the presumed thoughts of others. These skills played an important role in enabling self-awareness and helping us to differentiate ourselves from others.
5. The “Spatialization of Time”
The spatialization of time is the ability to visualize time as a spatial dimension to move through. Jaynes explains that this ability enables people to mentally time travel, imagining things that have happened in the past and things that might occur in the future. This helps us to think about time in an organized way, which makes it easier to understand and remember events in chronological order.
6. The Ability to Use “Conciliation” to Integrate Our Experiences
Conciliation is Jaynes’s term for the ability to weave together different mental experiences—what we perceive through our senses, what we think about those perceptions, and how we feel about them—into a single, coherent understanding of reality. For example, when you’re at a party, conciliation lets you simultaneously process the music you hear, your memories of similar gatherings, your emotional response to the crowd, and your thoughts about what to do next. He argues that conciliation is crucial for consciousness because it allows us to make sense of both our internal and external experiences, create meaningful narratives about what’s happening to us, and make decisions based on this complete picture.
The Human Brain Became More Adaptable
At the same time that people were developing consciousness and the cognitive tools it includes, the brain likely underwent changes that altered how it processed information and created our conscious experiences. Jaynes notes the brain gradually became more changeable and more adaptable. This new ability to change, which experts call neuroplasticity, enabled the brain to compensate for damage early in a person’s life by developing a different pathway to complete a cognitive task. As the brain became more resilient and better able to reorganize itself, it also became possible for different regions of the brain to work together on tasks like handling language or regulating emotion—which made it better able to adapt to new challenges.
(Shortform note: The concept of neuroplasticity has a long history. A century ago, psychiatrist Adolf Meyer championed the idea that our experiences could reshape our brains, contradicting the prevailing view that the adult brain was fixed. Meyer’s theory of “psychobiology” characterized the mind and body as an integrated system, where mental activity can influence biological processes in the brain. Modern research using brain imaging has validated core aspects of this theory. We now know that the brain can reorganize neural pathways and create new connections between regions in response to learning, experience, injury, environment, physical exercise, sleep, and even mindfulness practices.)
Jaynes also points out that the mechanisms that enabled humans to develop consciousness likely interacted with each other in complex ways. The development of metaphorical language may have both enabled and been enabled by changes to the brain. Jaynes suggests these changes created a feedback loop, and each development enhanced the others. Consequently, humans gained a wide range of new abilities: to mentally simulate different scenarios for problem-solving and decision-making, to exercise more flexibility when responding to new or surprising situations, to think about others’ mental states, and even to lie to one another—a new skill enabled by the gap between inner experience and outer behavior.
