Exactly when did we become conscious beings? (Aristotle, self)

[rishi85]

I am not well read on this topic(I'd love to) but from what I understand our ancient ancestors- pro magnums or Neanderthals were like chimpanzees. Like that first segment of 2001 A space Odyssey.
Then with time we evolved. Discovered fire.We made huts and grew grains and domesticated animals.
So exactly when and how did we become these thoughtful ponderous beings? Ancient Egyptians or Greeks wrote books on Pondering and human suffering.

But exactly when? At what stage, what time phase and....why/how?
Guess this is more a science question.

[Nozzferrahhtoo]

It is currently an unknown. One of the issues is we do not even understand the functions of consciousness at all yet. So trying to pinpoint a point in our evolution when it arose is like trying to pin the tail on the donkey not just while blind folded, but without even knowing what a tail is or what it is for.

At this time the best we can do in our science is say that the rise of human consciousness was very likely connected to the rise of either of (or very likely both)... the mirror neuron system... and language. Issue is we do not really understand when they arose either so it does not help us very much at pin pointing a time locale either.

So in short: Open question and no one really knows. But hypotheses abound.

"The Tell Tale Brain" by VS Ramachandran is the go to book I would recommend on this as it lays out what we know, what we do not know, and what we think we know quite well on the topic of human consciousness. And it contrasts the various hypotheses quite well and impartially against each other.

[newyorkergraduate]

Man became conscious of animals about 40,000 years ago as exemplified by the Lascaux Caves art in France.

Man became conscious of himself about 5,000 years ago as exemplified by the Vedas, Buddha, and later by Aristotle.

[ukrkoz]

Hence, if you were to believe a marginal by today theory of evolution, the above posts are helpful and Ok for you, OP.

Though one of the major geneticists said that should have Darwin ever found about modern genetics, he'd have never ever come up with his theory, that being bogus.

But anyhow. I can tell YOU, OP, exactly when You become conscious.

When YOUR Conscious Self enters the body, built for it, during its current existence. Normally, this happens somewhere between 3 and 5 years of age.