It seems like the near ubiquity of mirrors and reflective surfaces would have to have a significant impact on people’s sense of self. I honestly can’t imagine going through life only knowing myself from the eyes out. But isn’t that how early man would have experienced herself? I’ve never seen my reflection in a pond, so where would she get an image of herself? Another interesting thing I’ve seen is a bended mirror that gives you a true image, rather than the normal reversed image, in the mirror. It is almost as if you are looking at somebody else.
Is there any historical, anthropological, philosophical, psychological, or other relevant data on how the mirror affected humans?
Reflections in water would have been common throughout human history. They’re easier to see in water with trees growing over it. The trees provide protection form glare, as well as keepingt the surface flat by stopppping the wind. Muddy water also reflects better than clear water.
Given our history as savanna apes, these conditions would have been fairly common. With everyone drinking directly from the water without using cups I suspect that almost everyone always saw their reflection at some time.
It seems more likely that people invented mirrors because they were interested in there appearance, rather han the othe way around. As such it’s doubtful that the mirror changed people greatly.
Assuming that the mirror was invented sometime in the last 10,000 yrs (and I think this is a reasonable assumption) then the answer is no. As Blake mentioned, humans would have been seeing themselves in natural “mirrors” for millinia beforehand. All the evidence we have is that physically and genetically we have not changed as a species in any meaningful way in the last 10k yrs. Since chimps are able to recognize themselves in a mirror, it is likely that our pre-sapiens ancestors would have recognized themselves in water reflections millions of years before the present.