# Was Primordial man conscious? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 10, 2014, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-primordial-man-conscious/695247 "2014-08-10T17:02:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 33
**Author:** ![Biffster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biffster/32/339_2.png) [@Biffster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffster)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2014, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-primordial-man-conscious/695247/641 "2014-08-18T21:27:19Z")
> [@Jonathan\_Chance](#): > > OK, Mickiel. > > I’m not seeing this thread going anywhere. And taking shots at your respondents isn’t helping. > > I’m going to monitor this thread and if it doesn’t acquire some substance I’m locking it down. Thank you. And how do we establish whether or not a particular being has consciousness? ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2014, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-primordial-man-conscious/695247/642 "2014-08-18T21:31:30Z")
> [@Mickiel](#): > > Are you any different? Explain to me when you have accepted and adopted a view coming from a Theist? > > The real problem is that I am no different than you concerning personal convictions , you are just prejudiced in that you think only you can be confidently committed in your views and correct in them. The difference is that your beliefs are the result of ignorance and declarations of fiat. Whereas the scientific consensus is the result of looking a the actual world and taking the evidence as it comes. Your positions aren’t worth as much as mine, for instance, because yours are based on nothing more than wishful thinking. ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2014, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-primordial-man-conscious/695247/643 "2014-08-18T21:32:49Z")
> [@Biffster](#): > > Thank you. And how do we establish whether or not a particular being has consciousness? There is a test involving an anal probe and oral probe. Unfortunately, they aren’t labeled. ---
**Author:** ![Biffster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biffster/32/339_2.png) [@Biffster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffster)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2014, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-primordial-man-conscious/695247/644 "2014-08-18T21:36:29Z")
[http://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/08/19/u2ejudu5.jpg](http://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/08/19/u2ejudu5.jpg) The representation of consciousness in this drawing would seem to indicate that one of the give senses, in this case sight, is first involved, leading to some kind of encoding in the brain that gives a human being the ability to imagine the concept of dog in their brain without a dog actually being present. I would imagine that this is something man has in common with animals, with the chief difference being our particular linguistic common names for the things we see. Animals would appear to have their own languages, like birds for example, which may be more or less evolved than our own. Is this a piece of what we mean by consciousness? Awareness, and ability to imagine? Or is there more? ---
**Author:** ![Biffster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biffster/32/339_2.png) [@Biffster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffster)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2014, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-primordial-man-conscious/695247/645 "2014-08-18T21:37:29Z")
> [@Lobohan](#): > > There is a test involving an anal probe and oral probe. Unfortunately, they aren’t labeled. Funny! ---
**Author:** ![Biffster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biffster/32/339_2.png) [@Biffster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffster)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2014, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-primordial-man-conscious/695247/646 "2014-08-18T21:42:33Z")
> [@Twoflower](#): > > Problem is, the OP’s theory is that “primordial” \*Homo sapiens \*went extinct during the ice age, and modern “conscious” humans were re-created in Biblical times. And he’s not remotely amenable to accepting any opinion but his own. Then why don’t we continue this discussion as though he were. Forum threads are known to evolve and change as new ideas are brought forth. The ones that don’t tend to get locked down before long. ---
**Author:** ![Biffster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biffster/32/339_2.png) [@Biffster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffster)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2014, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-primordial-man-conscious/695247/647 "2014-08-18T21:52:00Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > The trouble is, “consciousness as we know it” was never the topic of this thread. The OP has a personal definition of the word “Consciousness” that does not match any dictionary definition. He also had a term called “primordial man” which is also meaningless in scientific circles. If man indeed evolves over tens, hundreds, thousands, even millions of years, it is impossible to find a point where the human model is definitely this and not that. It’s like trying to pinpoint where the Atlantic Ocean ends and the Pacific Ocean begins. It’s all the same ocean. Perhaps “primitive man” would be more meaningful, though the OP seems to prefer to start with Adam, someone I believe any rational person can see is mythological. But even then, in the biblical story, consciousness seems to come at the point Adam and his rib-mate Eve realize they are naked, ashamed, and they realize their mortality for the first time. I doubt that happened at a particular point with any actual Homo sapiens, but it’s an important turning point in the story. ---
**Author:** ![Munch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/munch/32/5281_2.png) [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2014, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-primordial-man-conscious/695247/648 "2014-08-18T21:57:31Z")
> [@Mickiel](#): > > Look at what I am up against > > there is only so much you can do with a wall. In the past, people have been known to stand on others’ shoulders to peer over walls… ---
**Author:** ![Biffster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biffster/32/339_2.png) [@Biffster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffster)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2014, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-primordial-man-conscious/695247/649 "2014-08-18T22:01:46Z")
> [@Sterling\_Archer](#): > > Consciousness as we know it is probably still changing, it’s not like a switch was flipped 300,000 years ago. Our conscious minds now are incrementally more developed than say, people in medieval times. I don’t think self-consciousness is an on-off phenomenon. Is a bug conscious? A dog? A chimp? A dolphin? To some degree, yes, but to the same degree as a human? Doubtful. It also seems to have something to do with memory, because it is difficult for us to have any conscious working concept of a dog without remembering what a dog looks like, sounds like, smells like and so on. I would guess that man’s consciousness is tied to brain developments in the area of memory and the persistence of memory even when the original subject has disappeared from view. For example, to see something “in the mind’s eye” we are not really seeing anything at all, just as we don’t actually “see” anything when we dream except the insides of our eyelids. However our brains are evolved enough to be able to recreate that image somehow. I’m sure other animals have this ability too, but I think where humans differ is that we can wrapped up in concepts of past and future and become almost oblivious to the present moment. ---
**Author:** ![Biffster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biffster/32/339_2.png) [@Biffster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffster)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2014, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-primordial-man-conscious/695247/650 "2014-08-18T22:15:10Z")
> [@Mickiel](#): > > I reserve the right to leave Adam in it. Of course you do, and I tried to answer that in a previous post. It is this kind of limited thinking that makes the conversation go around in circles and makes mods threaten to lock down the thread unless something of substance develops. I think it’s a great topic myself and we’ve only scratched the surface of where your original question could lead. If you require Adam, then it’s pretty obvious: as soon as Adam & Eve ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, something in their brains changed. They became afraid, which they weren’t before, and they became aware of their own mortality. It’s a great story and a great and well-known parable about how man’s consciousness came to be. As a story, it has great educational power. However, as non-fiction it simply does not work, not just because of all the things left out, like did Adam & Eve have belly buttons, and if they only begat three sons, Cain, Abel and Seth (as the source says), all products of the same seed, then where did the rest of the human race come from? Remember, in order for the bible story to be real, ALL human beings must have been descended from Adam. That implies incest at some point, and again after the great flood when only Noah’s family survives. Not to mention all of the physical evidence that suggests the earth is about 4.5 billion years old, not a mere 6000 years. And certainly far older than the arbitrary 40,000 year figure. If you want to have a serious discussion about this, you’re going to need to remove “Adam” from the discussion. Which brings us back to the real and more interesting question: when and how did consciousness emerge in human beings? ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2014, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-primordial-man-conscious/695247/651 "2014-08-18T23:19:16Z")
> [@Biffster](#): > > . . . Which brings us back to the real and more interesting question: when and how did consciousness emerge in human beings? And…why? Does this kind of cognition confer a survival advantage large enough to justify the incredible cost in metabolism and other investments? Does our consciousness really pay off that highly? This is why I admire the notion that consciousness was an “emergent” property of large brains, and was never actually “evolved for” as such. Big brains have a very obvious pay-off: better memory, visual recognition, etc. It lets us wander a larger territory and still know where we are. We don’t have to return by the path we took; we can look at a landmark, recognize it as the backside of the hill we live near, and go home by the short cut. But consciousness? Self-awareness? The advantages seem marginal…and perhaps even counter-productive. (In a similar way, some people have proposed that music is an emergent property of our complex language. We didn’t really evolve singing, dancing, drumming and piping, but we evolved language skills…which gave us music entirely as an extra advantage. It wasn’t “planned” – so to speak – by the evolutionary pathway, but was an entirely fortuitous bonus.) ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2014, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-primordial-man-conscious/695247/652 "2014-08-19T00:57:22Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > But consciousness? Self-awareness? The advantages seem marginal…and perhaps even counter-productive. For a predatory and social animal. the advantages are huge. By being conscious and self aware, we are able to analyse our own thought patterns and extrapolate them onto other members of our own species and onto our prey. That enables me to know how somebody is likely to be feeling without actually seeing them. If I know that somebody has been out hunting all day, that they are likely to be tired and irritable and all that goes with that. And I can know this without having any contact with them at all because I know how I feel under those circumstances. I can therefore tailor my social interactions accordingly and have a warm meal and a soft bed prepared for them when they arrive, or get my mates together and ambush them depending on what I want to achieve. If it’s hot, then I know that prey will seek cool areas. If my prey is injured, I can predict where it will take shelter. Consciousness and self awareness are massively advantageous to humans on an everyday basis. ---
**Author:** ![Biffster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biffster/32/339_2.png) [@Biffster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffster)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2014, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-primordial-man-conscious/695247/653 "2014-08-19T02:22:26Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > Consciousness and self awareness are massively advantageous to humans on an everyday basis. I’d like to think so, but I could be biased, being human and all. I do wonder how much other animals think or contemplate things or replay situations in their minds, if they think at all. I mean, my cat seems to have better problem-solving skills than my dog does, but sometimes he learns from watching her example, like when he climbed up on the table and ate the other half of my sandwich yesterday. I know their cognition is different, but there sure seems like there’s some kind of consciousness sometimes. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2014, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-primordial-man-conscious/695247/654 "2014-08-19T02:37:14Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > For a predatory and social animal. the advantages are huge. By being conscious and self aware, we are able to analyse our own thought patterns and extrapolate them onto other members of our own species and onto our prey. . . . Okay! That makes a good solid metric ton of sense! Of course…heh heh heh…it also opens it up to recursion. “Yes, but since he knows that I know how he feels, he’ll act different! But wait; if he knows that I know that he knows…” And having a kind of prey-empathy makes very good sense for a hunter. “If I were a scared deer on the run, I’d go that direction…” (It also prompts us to have religious regard for the “spirit” of the prey, explaining the elaborate rituals of thanks and apology that some cultures have after a hunt and a kill. We continue to project this empathic sensitivity, even after the animal’s death.) ---
**Author:** ![vietnamvet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/90db22/32.png) [@vietnamvet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vietnamvet)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2014, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-primordial-man-conscious/695247/655 "2014-08-19T03:03:11Z")
Read some books channeled “Bashar” It’s enlightening. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2014, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-primordial-man-conscious/695247/656 "2014-08-19T03:06:40Z")
Please, do go on. ---
**Author:** ![zoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zoid/32/336_2.png) [@zoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zoid)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2014, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-primordial-man-conscious/695247/657 "2014-08-19T03:09:18Z")
> [@vietnamvet](#): > > Read some books channeled “Bashar” > It’s enlightening. Best username/post combo _ **EVER!** _ ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2014, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-primordial-man-conscious/695247/658 "2014-08-19T03:29:33Z")
> [@vietnamvet](#): > > Read some books channeled “Bashar” > It’s enlightening. Books are written and published-televisions are channeled. I don’t think the rantings of a former special effects designer([Darryl Anka)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darryl_Anka) are going to be of much help to us here, but if if we ever start a thread on imaginary voices from parallel universes be sure to jump right in. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2014, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-primordial-man-conscious/695247/659 "2014-08-19T03:44:14Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Okay! That makes a good solid metric ton of sense! > > Of course…heh heh heh…it also opens it up to recursion. “Yes, but since he knows that I know how he feels, he’ll act different! But wait; if he knows that I know that he knows…” > > And having a kind of prey-empathy makes very good sense for a hunter. “If I were a scared deer on the run, I’d go that direction…” > > (It also prompts us to have religious regard for the “spirit” of the prey, explaining the elaborate rituals of thanks and apology that some cultures have after a hunt and a kill. We continue to project this empathic sensitivity, even after the animal’s death.) Or as Jeremy Rifkin puts it, “To empathize is to civilize”. > **[The empathic civilization](https://www.ted.com/talks/jeremy_rifkin_the_empathic_civilization)** > > In this talk from RSA Animate, bestselling author Jeremy Rifkin investigates the evolution of empathy and the profound ways it has shaped human development and society. One related item is that he thinks that consciousness was there for people earlier than 30,000 years ago, and consciousness also changes in prehistory and history, in prehistory it is likely that a big part of it, empathy, extended only to your blood type, to your tribe. Then when early civilizations happened humans started to associate based on regions ties, (Jews, Christians, Buddhists etc. they began to consider themselves an extended family) Then a larger fiction appeared: the nation state, and now a lot of our empathy goes to national ties. The new technologies could make us, like fire and writing once did, allow us to develop our empathy and other items in our internal wiring and this time extend it at the world level. Not only including all humans into our association but other creatures that thanks to evolution are related to us. Too bad that it seems that change like takes time and many have to learn to use the new tools before that change is possible IMHO. And it could be too late for many. I fear that that change will not be as fast as I hope. ---
**Author:** ![Mickiel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/0ea827/32.png) [@Mickiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mickiel)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2014, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-primordial-man-conscious/695247/660 "2014-08-19T04:48:30Z")
> [@Jonathan\_Chance](#): > > OK, Mickiel. > > I’m not seeing this thread going anywhere. And taking shots at your respondents isn’t helping. > > I’m going to monitor this thread and if it doesn’t acquire some substance I’m locking it down. They been taking shots at me since I started the thread. I wasn’t even halfway through presenting the different aspects I had planned on. But if you see it going nowhere, then shut it down as you please. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-primordial-man-conscious/695247.md?page=32) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-primordial-man-conscious/695247.md?page=34)