A review synthesizing evidence on how the Y chromosome influences human cognition, focusing on neurodevelopmental disorders, specific genes, brain structure, and evolutionary context.
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 of Consciousness, 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, Nüwa, Quetzalcoatl) and was transmitted globally via bullroarer mystery cults (cf. the rites of Dionysus or Australian Dreamtime).
Topics
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 (usually produced with OpenAI’s Deep Research or latest reasoning model).
Research Articles
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 — A Breeder’s-Equation Reality Check
Why the blank-slate claim that cognition hasn’t evolved since the Upper Palaeolithic fails basic population genetics—and 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.
Hydra’s Venom and the Wolf: Herakles’ Madness and the Snake Cult of Consciousness
How Herakles’ Hydra-poisoned arrows, Euripides’ tragedy, and wolf-madness encode a deep serpent logic that resonates with the Snake Cult and Eve Theory of Consciousness.
Bullroarers, Initiation, and the End of the Sapient Paradox
An in-depth exploration of the bullroarer complex, Eliade’s initiation model, and whether a global mystery cult solved the sapient paradox in the Neolithic.
Narrative Selves in Deep Time
A deeper dive into the narrative self—its layers, neural basis, cultural variability, and possible deep-time origins via the Eve Theory of Consciousness.
How Wrong Would We Have to Be About Old World Contact?
A systematic look at how archaeology, genetics, linguistics, and disease ecology would all have to fail for substantial Old World settlement in pre-Columbian America to be real.