How pronouns, rituals, myths, and fluted spear points reveal a single Ice-Age culture behind all pre-Columbian peoples.
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
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.
Australia and the Sapient Paradox: Evidence for a Late Cognitive Leap
Examining the archaeological record of Australia (Sahul) – early colonization, persistent simple technologies, late emergence of complex art – as a key case study supporting the Sapient Paradox and the late development of behavioral modernity.
Herakles & Dionysus — Twin Keys of the Serpent Mysteries
How Cosmic-Herakles sets the wheel of time while Dionysus turns it toward liberation in Orphic-Bacchic cults.
Earliest Complex Tools of the Genus Homo
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.
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.
Dennett’s Missing Origin Story: How EToC Updates Jaynes and Explains the Narrative Self
A deep dive for Dennett/Jaynes readers arguing Eve Theory of Consciousness supplies the concrete gene–culture origin story Dennett’s narrative self model leaves open.
Eve Theory of Consciousness: A Mechanism for Wilber’s Eden
A deep dive connecting Ken Wilber’s Up from Eden to the Eve Theory of Consciousness (EToC), proposing a mechanism and timeline for ego-birth via recursion and self-domestication.