A comprehensive survey of the earliest complex tools made by early humans, from hafted axes and spears to bows, woodworking implements, and symbolic artifacts, examining archaeological evidence and scholarly debates.
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
Earliest Known Musical Instruments (Archaeological Evidence)
A comprehensive survey of the world’s earliest known musical instruments from archaeological evidence, including Paleolithic bone flutes, ancient drums, bullroarers, and the first stringed instruments.
Evolutionary Models of the History of Consciousness
A comprehensive survey of thinkers who proposed evolutionary models of human consciousness, from Hegel and Comte to Gebser and Wilber, mapping stages from primitive to modern awareness.
The Pirahã in Eden: A Holdout Beyond the Human Condition
Argues—within the Eve & Snake Cult theories—that Pirahã culture preserves a pre-Holocene mode of mind; contrasts with Clovis-era ‘apex’ consciousness; weighs genetics, ritual, and myth.
Heracles and the Snake Cult of Consciousness
Reading Heracles’ serpent episodes—Hydra, Ladon, Cerberus—as initiatory stations of a pan‑Eurasian ‘Snake Cult of Consciousness,’ with Eleusis as capstone.
Newton’s Osiris = Bacchus = Sesac
Newton’s euhemerist move: why he equates Dionysus/Bacchus with Osiris and the historical Egyptian king Sesac (a.k.a. Sesostris/Shishak), and how Bacchic rites mirror Osirian cult.
Newton’s Ur-Faith: Reconstructing the First Religion
How Isaac Newton tried to recover the primitive monotheism—using textual criticism, chronology, and myth-as-history to rebuild a universal true religion.
Emergence Myths, Female Agency, and Deep Time
Do emergence-style creation myths reach back to the Paleolithic? A critical synthesis of phylogenetic work, Pueblo/Andean data, and Paleolithic ‘Venus’ iconography that centers women as cosmogenic agents.
Sahul’s Mystery Cults: Bullroarers, the Dreaming, and the Tambaran
A concise case for historical links between Australian bullroarer–initiation and PNG Tambaran/flute cults, framed by Sahul-era connectivity.
Greek and Buddhist Philosophy: What We Actually Know About Crossings and Common Sources
A neutral, source-heavy map of real contacts and plausible influence between Greek and Buddhist thought—what’s evidenced, what’s contested, and what’s likely convergent.