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).
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 o3-Pro).
Research Articles
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.
The “Snake Venom Entheogen” Theory in Ancient Mystery Cults
Survey of textual clues and modern hypotheses that ancient mystery cults may have used snake venom in controlled rites, with sources and cautions.
Ghosts of the Ice Age: The Ancient North Eurasians and Their Global Legacy
Ancient North Eurasians: who they were, what their Ice Age culture looked like, and how far their genes and cultural innovations reach today.
Stories, Then the Story of ‘I’: EToC across the Late Pleistocene and Holocene
A two-stage account of consciousness: language and stories coalesce ~60 ka; the narrative ‘I’ emerges in the Holocene via women-led serpent ritual networks and pronoun tech.
New Experiments Upon Vipers — Chapter X (Modernized Transcript)
Modernized transcript of Chapter X of Moyse Charas’s 1673 English edition, with brief context and link to the Internet Archive source.
Female‑Led Cosmogenesis vs. the Great Mother
Defines ‘female‑led cosmogenesis’ and argues that Paleolithic art and cross‑cultural myth patterns support multiple active female creators over a monolithic Great Mother, with phylogenetic and archaeological evidence.
The Atman Question
A philosophical science fiction novella exploring AI consciousness through the lens of the first-person discovery and the recursive nature of self-awareness.
The Incest Taboo as a Decisive Human Technology
A speculative synthesis: an early, enforced incest taboo scaled exogamy and alliance networks, raised effective population size and heterozygosity, and helped H. sapiens outcompete archaic cousins.