point is that there is no doubt in the mind of any researchers that our Upper
Palaeolithic ancestors had fully modern language; they were able to create arbitrary
sounds with meanings, to manipulate complex grammatical constructions, to speak
about the past and the future and to convey abstract notions ... notions that the
Neanderthal mind could not grasp (Lewis-Williams, 2004:88-89).
Jaynes’ essential thesis that consciousness is only a recent development
seems to have, unfortunately, influenced others. The neuroscientist Antonio
Damasio is another recent writer whose ideas recall those of Jaynes; in fact, he
explicitly refers to Jaynes in his book that also deals with the way that human
consciousness has arisen. I ndeed, he seems to think that the evolution of
consciousness may have extended into even later times than Jaynes suggests, for
he maintains that Plato and Aristotle did not have a concept of consciousness in the
way that we do today; that today we “ ... are conscious of a core self ... the
autobiographical self” (Domasio, 1999:174). I n counterpoint, Harold Bloom’s
wonderful argument of the influence of the most potent shaman-like mythopoeic
writer of all, William Shakespeare, in shaping egoic consciousness might be
considered:
The idea of Western character [ as a product of consciousness and
cognition] , of the self as a moral agent, has many sources: Homer
and Plato, Aristotle and Sophocles, the Bible and St. Augustine,
Dante and Kant, and all you might care to add. Personality, in our
sense, is a Shakespearean invention, and is not only
Shakespeare’s greatest originality but also the authentic cause of
his perpetual pervasiveness. I nsofar as we ourselves value, and
deplore, our own personalities, we are the heirs of Falstaff and of
Hamlet, and of all the other persons who throng Shakespeare’s
theatre of what might be called the colours of the spirit ... it
provokes considerable resistance from scholars when I say that
Shakespeare invented us (Bloom, 1998:4-5).
I ndeed, the rise of writing helps to break up the continuum of the
sensorium, the parts of the brain concerned with the reception and interpretation of
sensory stimuli; to locate consciousness in the written word, or perhaps more
precisely, a narrative. What the written word, or narrative image is to the
sensorium, analogously, the ego is to the entire consciousness, and the city or place
is to the entire encirclement of nature. Writing, individuation and civilization are all
parts of the one large cultural phenomenology (Thompson, 1981:196), but I would
add that the ability to locate and identify the self, narratively, in a locale or place
was also a part of that cultural phenomenology.