Examines the evolutionary hypothesis that female-led selection pressures for social intelligence and self-domestication placed women at the vanguard of human evolution.
How Did a Self-Aware Mind Evolve?
Meditations on mind, myth, and evolution. Cast the scales from your eyes!
TL;DR
- Symbolic thought emerged ~50,000 years ago, yet the universal human symbol, “I,” or the ego appears globally entrenched only in the Holocene ~10 kya.
- According to Eve Theory, women invented serpent-venom initiation rituals that reliably taught subject-object separation, producing powerful gene-culture evolution towards understanding “I am’” at a young age.
- The memory of this awakening is preserved worldwide in creation myths (cf. Lucifer, Nรผwa, Quetzalcoatl) and was transmitted globally via bullroarer mystery cults (cf. the rites of Dionysus or Australian Dreamtime).
Topics
Consciousness ยท Evolution ยท Prehistory & Origins ยท Myth & Ritual ยท Deep Research
About
I’m Andrew Cutler, a Machine Learning engineer researching human origins. My work connects psychology, comparative mythology, and AI to trace how recursive self-awareness evolved. Snakecult.net is a place for me to put lightly-edited AI-generated essays that explore niche questions. (These are usually produced with OpenAI’s Deep Research, which is less prone to hallucination.)
Research Articles
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Christ as the Serpent: Gnostic & Dualist Traditions
An expanded survey of every known Christian-Gnostic current that equated Jesus with the Edenic serpent, complete with extended primary-source excerpts.
Role of the Y Chromosome in Human Cognition: A Literature Review
A review synthesizing evidence on how the Y chromosome influences human cognition, focusing on neurodevelopmental disorders, specific genes, brain structure, and evolutionary context.
The Logos and the Serpent: Mythic Evolution of Self-Awareness
Exploring the evolution of self awareness through Genesis, John’s Logos, Gnosticism, and sacrificial myths, linking the Edenic serpent to Christ and the birth of the conscious self.
The Bullroarer: A Worldwide Ritual Instrument and the Case for Ancient Cultural Diffusion
An anthropological examination of the bullroarer, arguing its global distribution and consistent ritual functions point to cultural diffusion from a common prehistoric origin.
Eve Theory of Consciousness: Solving the Wallace Problem of Human Cognition
A comprehensive, evidence-driven defence of the Eve Theory as the only evolutionary route to recursive self-awareness and language (i.e. the Wallace Problem).
Human Intelligence: 50,000 Years Is Plenty โ A Breeder’s-Equation Reality Check
Why the blank-slate claim that cognition hasn’t evolved since the Upper Palaeolithic fails basic population geneticsโand what ancient DNA now shows.
The Narrative Self: A Multidisciplinary Literature Review
A comprehensive review exploring the concept of the ’narrative self’ across philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, and literary theory.
Light-Poison, Eucharistic Toxikon & Cosmic Venom: three ophidian tropes unpacked
Close reading of Manichaean, Ophite and Naassene passages that speak of Christ-as-Serpent in pharmacological terms.
Deep Roots Of Pan-American Culture
How pronouns, rituals, myths, and fluted spear points reveal a single Ice-Age culture behind all pre-Columbian peoples.
Prehistoric Myths with Origins Over 8,000 Years Ago
Examines the surprising stability of mythic motifs over millennia, suggesting myths like the Cosmic Hunt or Serpent symbolism could encode memories of real cognitive shifts, supporting the Eve Theory’s timeframe.
Women as Progenitors of Culture: Mythic Origins and Scholarly Debates
Examines the historical and anthropological debate surrounding the concept of primordial matriarchy, from Bachofen’s theories to modern critiques and evidence.
Herakles & Dionysus โ Twin Keys of the Serpent Mysteries
How Cosmic-Herakles sets the wheel of time while Dionysus turns it toward liberation in Orphic-Bacchic cults.
Campbell the Diffusionist: Boats, Not Brainwaves
Joseph Campbell’s own words show that he traced mythic parallels to trade-routes and sea-lanes, not Jungian Wi-Fi.
Joseph Cambpell, Champion of Cultural Diffusion
A source-by-source catalogue of every passage where Joseph Campbell attributes mythic parallels to real-world cultural diffusion rather than Jungian psychic unity.
The ‘Venom’ Motif in Serpent-Christ Traditions
Do Gnostic writers ever speak of Christ’s serpent as literally poisonousโor as an antidote? A source-by-source audit.
Awakening Eve: How Self-Knowledge Rewired the Human Mind
How a late Upper-Pleistocene spark of self awareness spread memetically, rewired our genome, and solved the Sapient Paradox.
X Chromosome and Higher-Order Cognition
How X-linked gene dosage, inactivation escape, and imprinting sculpt human brain development, intelligence, and social behavior.
Big Bangs of the Mind: 7 Theories About the Upper-Paleo Brain Upgrade
Overview of key theorists (Klein, Chomsky, Bickerton, Tattersall, Mithen, Coolidge & Wynn) and their theories on the Upper Paleolithic Cognitive Revolution.
Phoenicians in the Americas: A Chronological Analysis of a Controversial Theory
A comprehensive historical analysis of claims that Phoenician sailors reached the Americas before Columbus, examining evidence and scholarly debate from classical antiquity to modern times.
The Australian Dreamtime and the Symbolic Revolution: Indigenous Evidence for Late Consciousness?
Comparison of the early Holocene emergence of the Aboriginal Dreamtime symbolic system with the Near East’s Neolithic ‘revolution of symbols,’ examining Australian rock art, technology, exchange networks, language diffusion, and cognitive impacts.
The Snake Cult of Consciousness vs. McKenna’s Stoned Ape Theory
An exploration of two theories on the origins of human consciousness: the Snake Cult/Eve Theory (snake venom) versus the Stoned Ape Theory (psilocybin mushrooms).
Cosmic Herakles & Dionysus Zagreus: Orphic Cosmology and Mysteries
A detailed exploration of the complementary roles of Cosmic Herakles (Chronos) and Dionysus Zagreus in Orphic theogony, myth, ritual praxis, and Neoplatonic interpretation.
The Ritualised Mind and the Eve Theory of Consciousness: A Convergent Account of Human Cognitive Evolution
Deep synthesis of Tom Froese’s Ritualised-Mind Hypothesis and Andrew Cutler’s Eve/Snake-Cult Theory, resolving the Sapient Paradox through ritual-mediated recursion, female agency, and geneโculture sweeps.
Nรผwa and Fuxi: The Serpentine First Couple and the Square-Compass Motif in Mythology
An exploration of the serpentine creator deities Nรผwa and Fuxi in Chinese mythology and their parallels in world mythologies.
Old Woman โ Death Motif Across World Myth
A source-heavy world survey of tales where a crone decides that humans must die.
She Who Brings Death: Female Agents of Mortality in World Myth
A source-checked world survey of tales in which a woman’s act unleashes mortality. Includes a brief note on the (thin) quantitative literature.
Weaving Humanity: Women as Civilizers in World Mythology
A phylogenetic exploration of myths where women introduce clothing and weaving, symbolizing humanityโs separation from nature.
Who Was Here First? Indigenous American Myths of Earlier Peoples
Across the Americas, Indigenous traditions recall ant-folk, giants, and shadow-people who occupied the land before humans arrived.
Consider the Chicken
Weighing archaeological, genetic, and historical evidence for whether chickens reached the Americas before Columbus.
Men From the Sea: Myths, Skepticism, and the Return of Trans-Pacific Contact
Why colonial tales of giants, 20th-c. positivism, and new genome data all matter for the debate over pre-Columbian PolynesianโAmerican contact.
Hallucinogenic Atlas: A Continental Census of Ancient Entheogens
Continent-by-continent survey of archaeological, textual, and biochemical evidence for ancient entheogenic practices.
The Serpent’s Gift: Mythic Echoes of an Ancient Consciousness Cult
How a prehistoric serpent-goddess cult may have jump-started self-aware thought and spread its rites across the globe.
Darwin on Human Evolution: Short Timelines and Gene-Culture Interaction
Darwin’s views on the rapid pace of human evolution, driven by gene-culture interaction, reputation, language, and social institutions.
Echoes of a Holocene Eden: Proto-Myths of Fall and Creation across Eurasia
Comparative analysis of Eurasian ‘fall from grace’ myths suggesting a common proto-myth originating in the Paleolithic or early Holocene.
The Sapient Paradox: A Deep Dive into the Archaeological and Genetic Evidence
A comprehensive analysis of the Sapient Paradox, synthesizing archaeological findings (tools, art, burials) with paleogenetics (brain-related gene sweeps, population bottlenecks) to evaluate theories for the delayed emergence of behavioral modernity.
Cosmic Herakles โ Serpent of Time, Hero of Eden
From Gรถbekli Tepe initiation lore to Orphic world-egg cosmology, tracing Herakles’ twin careers as Adamic hero and winged time-serpent.
Zeus Drakรดn โ Serpent, Swallower, World-Renewer
Snake-shaped Zeus in chthonic cults, Orphic theogony, and Stoic ekpyrosis, mapped onto the HeraklesโDionysus macro-/micro-myth.
Pre-Columbian Trans-Oceanic Contact: Current Knowledge and Debate
A comprehensive analysis of evidence and scholarly debate surrounding pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact between the Americas and Old World civilizations.