The paleo perspective is immensely important. Jaynesian scholarship has most ignored everything biological, other than the brain. But the brain does not exist in isolation to the rest of the body, as there are numerous direct connections to the heart, guts, immune system, nervous system, etc. There is a ton of research, in particular, showing how diet and nutrition affects brain development and neurocognitive functioning. One of the biggest changes following the Bronze age involved the food system.

Related to this would be a changing exposure to microbes, symbiotes, and parasites. So, the body is also enmeshed in living environments. It’s interesting that, as humans have narrowed the bicameral voices down to a single egoic voice, there was also a narrowing down of other life forms we were exposed to, both microbial and larger species of plants and animals. In indigenous cultures, other voices of spirits often were identified with specific species, including psychedelic plants of course.

I think that the builders of the pyramids were genius engineers and they learned from trial and error over centuries, the Great Pyramid was almost perfectly aligned with true North which shows a complex understanding of the stars (they probably used the stars for this alignment). Who knows about the quarrying techniques they used, they may has been lost to time, but I haven’t read much of the newer research. I’ve read that they used massive sleds for transporting the stones, and that they only needed half the men to move the stones by pouring water on the sand in front of the sleds, and they may have transported some of them partially via water. Having a specialized division of labor and keeping really detailed records definitely helped them with their accomplishments- but so much of what they accomplished is mysterious and awe inspiring.

I’ve been on the paleo diet for about 15 years and seen amazing improvement in my ability to concentrate within a short time after starting it. I haven’t been super strict with it the last few years with the exception of not eating wheat because it’s what had the biggest improvement in my health. An interesting fact about modern bread wheat is it is a hexaploid meaning it has six pairs of chromosomes and it has somewhere between 164,000 to 334,000 genes which is at least six times more than humans have because of all of the hybridization that it has gone through.

“My post on the agricultural mind is directly about this factor. It might be that cereal grains, in being addictive, hijacked human biochemistry. As an extension of this argument, I argue that addictive substances in general increasingly replaced psychedelics, including ergot as farmers became better at eliminating it. As I mentioned to you in the Jaynes FB group, poppies and sugar cane were also first cultivated in the Axial Age.”

This definitely seems to be true to me, I’ve also read that sugar and caffeine both alter many psychedelics in unpleasant ways.

I wonder about how that worked for the bicameral mind. The Homeric Greeks had an extremely simple society that didn’t require much other than fairly straightforward reaction to situations. Even a siege lasting many years didn’t require much involved planning other than pillaging and plundering or otherwise shipping in supplies.

Yet we know some of the earlier societies in the Bronze Age were able to accomplish quite complicated feats. The most notable example is that of building the Giza pyramid complex that, according to Wikipedia, “a workforce of 10,000 laborers working in three-month shifts took around 30 years to build a pyramid.” Other possibly preconscious societies built pyramids and similar massive structures with stones that weighed hundreds of tons.

That would be impressive even if done today with modern technology. How did preconscious hypostases accomplish that? The bicameral mind, in some cases, was capable of immensely advanced thought and long-term planning. They may not have had a historical or linear sense of time, but they were able to organize across timeo in some way, far beyond reacting to immediate events and circumstances. How did that ability develop without consciusness? And how did they accomplish what seems impossible for the time?

“It seems apparent to me that the myth details not just the acquisition of consciousness, but also of man’s change from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to an agrarian one.”

This is where your theorizing covers similar ground to my own.

“Hebrew name of the forbidden fruit is a pun on sin; khet is the Hebrew word for sin, and some Rabbinic traditions regard khitah, or wheat, to be a pun on sin.”

The sinful fruit of wheat might be ergot, one of the early entheogens used in rituals. I’ve discussed this with another guy interested in Jaynes, but his blog has been taken down for the time being while he seeks a new site for it. Another person in the Jaynes FB group has occasionally linked to his blog posts. If and when his blog is back online, I’ll try to remember to tell you about it.

“Sages in the Midrash, an early commentary on Biblical texts, said that wheat once grew as tall as a palm tree, but its height was reduced after mankind had sinned.”

Here is something that confirms this early commentary: “Some early wheat species grew as tall as six feet, but modern varieties average two to three feet in height” (The Natural History of Wheat, Encyclopedia.com). By the way, wild wheat fields are more likely to have ergot growing on them. The earliest agriculture was more like a wild field with weeds mixed in. It was only during the Axial Age that more controlled and systematic farming methods were developed.

“As the climate in much of the world was becoming more hospitable for humans, large game became more and more depleted, and new sources of food were required for humankind’s ever-increasing numbers– it was at this time that gathered plants were becoming more and more important for survival.”

I noticed you quote the paleo diet advocate Loren Cordain, someone I’m familiar with. I’ve been following a number of variations on the paleo diet, most specifically the low-carb aspect. I’d note that grain consumption increased even more with the improved farming methods of the Axial Age. It’s been a steady increase of yields ever since. Large populations and urbanization made wild foods less and less prevalent in the diet and hence greater dependence on agricultural goods.

“cereal seeds, including wheat, maize, and barley, (as well as bovine and human milk), have opioid activity (interestingly enough, wheat and milk also contain proteins which have some degree of stimulatory activity, and also an analog of a dopaminergic peptide called MIF-1).”

It’s interesting that we both made this connection. My post on the agricultural mind is directly about this factor. It might be that cereal grains, in being addictive, hijacked human biochemistry. As an extension of this argument, I argue that addictive substances in general increasingly replaced psychedelics, including ergot as farmers became better at eliminating it. As I mentioned to you in the Jaynes FB group, poppies and sugar cane were also first cultivated in the Axial Age.

All of it is fascinating. There is a lot of great evidence to think about. In trying to make sense of what happened, we are forced to speculate, but it is informed speculation. Combined with Jaynesian scholarship, such a line of thought does have much explanatory power.

Thanks, your site is really interesting too.