TL;DR

  • EToC’s claim—that a selection gradient assembled human selfhood through increasingly recursive cognition—meshes with Suddendorf & Corballis’s account of mental time travel (MTT) as a multi-component capacity rather than a single module. Both predict staggered emergence and late finishing touches. EToC v3; 1
  • Archaeological proxies for recursion/MTT cluster in the Upper Paleolithic and later: narrative art (Sulawesi ≥51–44 kya), musical instruments (~42–40 kya), long-distance networks, and risky seafaring to Sahul (~65 kya). 2 3 4
  • Earlier “proto-recursive” behaviors exist (e.g., compound adhesives at ~70–100 kya; ochre “workshops” at 100 kya), but the full autonoetic, broadcaster-enabled package—time-traveling self plus public narration—consolidates later. 5 6
  • If recursion began intensifying ~60–70 kya, EToC expects final refinements within the last 20 kya—precisely when we see large-scale ritual architectures (e.g., Göbekli Tepe, 10th–9th mill. BCE) and deepening mythic codification. 7 8
  • Creation myths (Genesis, Prometheus, Dionysus) read like phenomenologies of the transition: the bite of mortality, the theft of future-shaping technology, the ecstasies and dangers of self-loss. This is what late-arriving autonoesis feels like. 9 10 11
  • MTT has costs (rumination, anxiety, mortality salience). Corballis and colleagues link mind-wandering/MTT to both creative foresight and its shadows; clinical commentary on S&C explicitly frames “costs of mental time travel.” 12

“What then is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I wish to explain it to one who asks, I do not know.”
— Augustine, Confessions (ca. 397)

Two theories, one ascent#

EToC (Eve Theory of Consciousness) argues that human selfhood is not a binary switch but a selection gradient: iterative improvements in recursive representation (representations of representations) ratcheted a flexible, autonoetic self—“the thing that knows it knows” and can simulate alternatives—out of earlier hominin cognition. EToC’s timeline places the decisive acceleration within the last 100,000 years, with an Upper Paleolithic inflection and late “finishing touches.” Vectors of Mind, v3.

Suddendorf & Corballis (S&C) recast the same ascent in cognitive-engineering terms. Mental Time Travel (MTT) is not a single “module” but a theater: stage, actors, director, set, and—critically—a broadcaster to share displaced episodes and plans. They tabulate linked hypotheses—Janus (past/future parity), Components, Traveler (autonoesis), Broadcaster (language)—and emphasize that humans uniquely integrate them. 1 Their “prospection systems” figure aligns memory systems with prospective counterparts and places episodic MTT at the flexible apex. 1 Language is not necessary for MTT, they argue, but gives the clearest evidence and may itself be shaped by MTT’s demands to narrate nonpresent events. 1

Synthesis. EToC supplies the population-genetic slope; S&C supplies the cognitive bill of materials. If selection pressures favored individuals who could recursively simulate selves and scenarios, we should see (1) incremental precursors; (2) an archaeological “package” when the components begin to co-assemble; (3) cultural externalizations that lock in the new capacity (music, myth, ritual, planned voyaging). That is more or less the record we have.

A practical timeline for recursion and autonoesis#

The timeline below blends EToC’s gradient with S&C’s components and archaeological proxies for domain‑general recursion/MTT (scene construction, displaced reference, broadcast).

A working chronology (last 150 kya → Holocene)#

Window (kya)Archaeological signals (selected)Cognitive proxies (S&C frame)EToC reading
120–100Ochre processing “workshops” with curated kits at Blombos (100 kya) Science. 13 6Multi-step planning; material recipes (set/props); off-line scheme rehearsalProto-recursive task decomposition without full broadcaster
80–70Compound adhesives (Sibudu) entail controlled heating, pH tuning, multi-constraint juggling PNAS. 5Executive control, prospective memory, causal abstraction (director) 1Recursion begins to “bite”: nested if-then procedures
70–60Sahul colonization requires blue-water planning and collective foresight (≥65 kya) Nature; Sci. Rep.. 14 4Shared simulation; broadcast for coordination (proto-narratives about absent horizons)Selection for prospective social recursion accelerates
50–40Aurignacian package: bone flutes, figurative art; Sulawesi narrative scenes ≥44 kya; musical instruments ≥42–40 kya J. Hum. Evol.; Nature. 15Scene construction, displaced reference, public broadcasting of nonpresent eventsAutonoetic self gains cultural scaffolds (music/story)
40–20Global dispersal & network growth; symbolic big-game narratives (Europe, SE Asia); Neanderthal decline Nature. 16Janus coupling (past ↔ future), group-level planning; language tense systems amplify evidence 1Integration phase; recursion shapes demography & niche construction
12–9Great aggregation rituals; monumental cult architecture at Göbekli Tepe (10th–9th mill.) PLOS ONE; DAI dating notes. 7 8Institutionalized broadcast: myth, feasting, time-binding calendars“Finishing touches”: autonoesis externalized as institutions

Note. The Upper Paleolithic cluster doesn’t require a “sudden mutation.” S&C explicitly expect multiple interacting components maturing on different schedules—theater, not a switch. 1 EToC’s selection gradient gives the dynamics shaping that assembly.

Why the proxies point to recursion, not just “symbolism”#

  1. Scene construction is costly. People with hippocampal damage cannot imagine novel scenes; brain networks for remembering the past and simulating the future substantially overlap (with extra load for future construction). 17 18 S&C’s Janus link is echoed in neuroimaging and patient work. 1

  2. Narrative art outside Europe demolishes the Eurocentric “Upper Paleolithic only” story. Sulawesi panels (≥51.2–44 kya) depict plotful scenes with therianthropic agents—mythic storytelling in pigment. 2 3

  3. Musical instruments (e.g., Geißenklösterle flutes ~42–40 kya) demand abstract combinatorics and social broadcast—the “broadcaster” slot in S&C’s theater. 15

  4. Seafaring to Sahul entails recursive planning under uncertainty: caching, route simulation, season/time windows, and multi‑party coordination. Demographic models strongly favor deliberate crossings. 4

  5. Earlier Middle Stone Age feats (adhesives, pigment workshops) show planning depth, but not yet durable public media of displaced events. They look like scaffolds toward the autonoetic+broadcaster complex. 5 13

Costs of time travel (and why Genesis feels right)#

S&C and commentators warn that MTT’s gains come with liabilities: executive-control load, prospective memory failures, depressive/anxious ruminations, and error-prone constructive memory. 1 Corballis places mind-wandering and MTT at the heart of our creativity and our unease; as we model futures, we also meet the fixed point—our own death. 12 He explicitly links MTT, language, and the capacity to talk about the nonpresent; and notes comparative signals of death awareness even in apes, with human elaborations riding on our autonoetic machinery. 12

Creation myths read like field notes from communities acquiring such machinery:

  • Genesis 2–3 frames the fall as the acquisition of knowledge that carries death into salience—immortality barred once autonoesis and moral recursion arrive (“knowing good and evil”). 9
  • Prometheus (Hesiod) gifts fire—a technological prosthesis for prospection—triggering sacrifice protocols (future-oriented exchange) and a cascade of unintended costs (Pandora). 10
  • Dionysus in Bacchae stages ecstasis—temporary dissolution of the narrating self—punctuating the sobriety of recursive control with its intoxicating opposite. 11

If myths are phenomenologies of the transition to a time-traveling self, their vividness and cross-cultural stickiness suggest a late consolidation—close enough to living memory (in deep time terms) to be ritually re-enacted rather than dimly fossilized. Studies of deep oral transmission—even of Pleistocene sea-level rise and volcanism—show that stories can preserve landscape events for many millennia. 19 20 21 That makes a last-20 kya “finish” entirely compatible with mythic endurance.

Where EToC and recursion jointly predict the world takeover#

  • Demography & dispersal. Once recursive broadcast locks in, cultural niche construction accelerates. Genomic estimates place major out‑of‑Africa expansions ~50–60 kya, consistent with rising prospection. 14

  • Narrative media bloom when the broadcaster matures. The Aurignacian and contemporaneous Sulawesi scenes are traceable external memory for displaced events—public time travel. 15 S&C’s theater metaphor anticipates exactly this: language/art as evidence rather than causes alone. 1

  • Institutional autonoesis in the Holocene. Sites like Göbekli Tepe crystallize schedules, feasting, ancestor cults, and mythic calendars—time-binding scaled up. 7 If recursion’s selective ramp started in earnest 60–70 kya, EToC’s expectation of late refinements (≤20 kya) dovetails with that architectural punctuation.

Esoteric interlude: recursion in the head, recursion in the village#

Recursion is not just “embedding clauses.” It is embedding perspectives: I remember that I once feared that I would someday die. That is MTT with nested temporal indices—a grammar of consciousness now formalized in cognitive models. 22 EToC treats this as the engine of the self: iterated self-models bootstrapping control, counterfactuals, and shared plans. S&C’s theater gives us the supply chain—hippocampal scene construction, executive control, theory of mind, broadcaster—whose coordination marks our species. 1

Myths are compiled code for that engine. Genesis encodes mortality salience; Prometheus, the ambivalence of foresightful tech; Dionysus, the relief valve for recursive overfit. The emotional accuracy of these stories is a clue to recency. They feel modern because they narrate the costs of becoming modern.

FAQ#

Q1. Doesn’t evidence of symbolism at 100 kya contradict a late emergence of recursion/MTT?
A. No—those are precursors (recipes, curated toolkits) showing planning depth. The full autonoetic+broadcaster complex blooms later in narrative art, music, and institutional time‑binding, matching S&C’s multi‑component theater and EToC’s gradient. 13 5 15

Q2. Is language the cause or the consequence of MTT?
A. S&C argue language is exquisitely adapted to displaced reference and may have been shaped by MTT; it’s not strictly necessary for MTT but makes it publicly legible—the “broadcaster.” 1

Q3. How do we link MTT to mortality awareness without overreaching?
A. Corballis ties mind‑wandering/MTT to modeling nonpresent events, including death; clinical and theoretical work marks costs of MTT (rumination, anxiety). Myths’ fixation on death reads as phenomenology of this new burden. 12

Q4. Why emphasize Sulawesi cave art?
A. It shows narrative scenes ≥44 kya (and new work ≥51.2 kya), undermining a Eurocentric tempo and supporting a broad, late‑Pleistocene consolidation of public narrative capacity. 3 2

Footnotes#

Sources#

If we’re right, then Recursive Eve is not a single ancestor but a process: a theater troupe coming together, act by act, until the play could finally be staged—and told, sung, carved, sailed, and ritually rebuilt. The last hundred millennia are the rehearsal notes; the Holocene is opening night.

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