Word: hearded
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...ability to hear such commands became almost universal among humans by 10,000 B.C., but they hardly considered the voices commonplace. "Bicameral man heard the voices of gods," Jaynes explained, touching on he most remarkable aspect of his theory: the notion that man eventually perceived these inner voices emanating from a divine source...
...almost every major world religion and civilization. Direct interaction between gods and men appears in the artwork, literature and religious traditions of most ancient cultures. "Early civilizations were all theocracies with God at the top," Jaynes says, adding that "when they talk about the 'word of god,' they actually heard him in their hallucinations." Jaynes points out that the statuary of many pagan religions depicts idols with mouths agape, as if the gods were speaking to the people...
However, Jaynes notes that idols produced in later periods consistently portray mute gods, a fact that conveniently fits into his theory of mind evolution. As the bicameral mind broke down and humans gained consciousness, he argues, they heard the voices in their mind with less frequency. Between the second and first millenium B.C., man eventually lost his "contact with the gods" and gained contact with himself. But a few bicameral individuals remained, people later depicted in the Bible and other books as having conversed with...
Jaynes draws from the Old Testament for evidence of the breakdown of bicameralism. He says early characters like Abraham lacked consciousness; they heard the word of God and they obeyed. Later sections of the Old Testament reveal men as more instrospective, however. While Jacob merely accepted his dreams at face value, his son Joseph interpreted them. "Moses is on the verge of being a conscious man," Jaynes says. The Hebrew law-giver "still hears the voice of God, but he only sees a burning bush, and Dueteronomy says he is the last to see God face-to-face. From that...
Clearly Jaynes has bought, or sold himself, on the whole package. He believes that some parts of his theory--the idea of bicameralism, his view of consciousness--could stand alone even if the notion that ancient civilizations heard inner voices were refuted. But Jaynes still thinks many of the differences between ancient and modern man are convincingly explained by his entire theory of the brain's evolution and the breakdown of bicameralism...