Caveats on the Origins of Consciousness and Civilization

I am unaware of what this feeling is. Yesterday I saw my face in the pond. I know it was my face because there was a daub of red mud on my forehead, and when I touched my finger to my own forehead, my finger had red mud on it. I looked in the pond again, and the red daub had shifted in relation to where my finger touched. The man that I assumed lived in the pond turned out to be me all along. I call him my reflection. I am unaware what utility this information holds, but after discovering this, I have been unable to shake this internal senstion. I am now looking at everything I do in reference to this image of my in the pond. I can now physically see me doing things in my head, as though I am watching me from above. Have decided to call this my "self."

I was in my cave today and, while I was cowering in the back, attempting to hide from the demon who inhabits the entrance on full moons, I noticed that this demon's motion correspond to my own movements. I held my hand up in a shape, and the shape corresponded to the same shape on the wall. It turns out that I block the moonlight from going past me, and the lack of moonlight behind me creates a copy of myself. I call him my "shadow." I have noticed him at sunset and sunrise, too. What I had assumed was the dark demon following me back to my cave turns out to be the effect of me blocking the sun from hitting the ground. I have noticed that, during the day, the shadow takes different shapes and is of different length. I have decided to call this phenomena "time."

I noticed something weird today. I was in my cave, and I made a sound, and then, as usual, the invisible monster called back to me. However, I noticed that when I made a different sound, the monster's reply changed. I believe that this sound is like my reflection in the pond. I think that sound is actually me.

I enjoy living in my cave. I found a rock that I can push in front of it. I have noticed that no animals threaten me at night. I left some berries and meat in my cave, and when i came back from the pond, it was still there. The pond is not far away, either. I can easily get water. It is safe. I gather food in the morning, and then spend most of my day hiding in my cave. I am no longer afraid at night, and I feel well-rested. I noticed a bird collecting grass and building a nest in a tree. I have done the same in the back of my cave. It is less-cold than sleeping on the ground. I am usually afraid that something will kill me or that I will starve. I still fear this every time I leave my cave, but inside my cave, I do not feel this. I like my cave.

I watched a deer fall on a sharp rock today. It's skin cleaved in two, down to the bone. After it died, While I was dragging it to my cave, I had an idea. I picked up a small rock and carried it back with me. After I had eaten and was very full, I ran the sharp rock along the deer's body. It cut the skin open. Normally I would never try such a thing, but in the safety of my cave, I am not afraid of a tiger attacking me. This sharp rock is very helpful in removing meat from the deer.

I am very bored in my cave. Whenever I notice something, I use that time to explore it. The deer carcass I collected, after eating, I used my sharp rock to break it into parts. I put bones in one pile, I put the fat and muscle fiber in another. I tore off the skin and used the rock to remove extra meat. I don't much care for the inner parts of the deer anymore. They do not taste as good as the muscle fiber and globs of fat. They also rot very quickly, and I do not have time to eat them. I do not leave the remains in my cave anymore. They smell very bad and I no longer have room.

I found a sharper rock today. It is a different color. It is much sturdier. The edge does not break apart as easily as the other one does, and it stays sharper than the other one I was using.

There is a wolf who hangs around my cave. He is interesting. Whenever I make a kill, I put the guts and skins in a pile. At night, he will come and eat from the pile. I saw him watching me today, but he did not try to attack me. While I was sleeping last night, he defended the pile from a tiger. This morning, when I was on my way to pond, I saw the tiger stalking me in the tree. I needed water so I cautiously drank. Unexpectedly, the saw the tiger and very aggressively chased it off. He did not, however, attempt to attack me. I like this wolf. I killed a squirrel today, but I did not put the guts outside of my cave until I saw the wolf. He came over very quickly and ate the guts, and did not try to hurt me. I like this wolf.

I spend a lot of time listening to my "self." He tells me to do things often, and when I do them, I discover things that make my life easier to live.

A female wandered by my cave today. She looks very healthy, and does not have a child. I offered my nest to her. She decided to stay. I do not have as much free time anymore, but she lets me have sex with her. If I am lucky, she will have a child. I can teach him how to help with living in the cave.

I tried to communicate to the female about my "self." I put a daub of red mud on her forehead and showed her the pond. she realized that it is her "reflection." I showed her the shadows. She seemed to understand that it was her as well. I do not let her leave the cave much. I want a child and I do not want anything to happen to her. I have noticed that she has used the sharp rock to make marks on a bone. I do not know what she is doing but it is interesting. I think she has started listening to her "self" like I have.

I have not had a kill in a while. I noticed in my skin and guts pile, that the pelts of the animals I butcher have dried out. The wolf picks off all of the remaining fat and flesh, but left the hide and fur. I do not have fur, so I often get cold. The animals do not seem to get cold and they have fur. The juice of the guts has soaked into the pelts and it smells very bad, so I decided to wash the fur in the pond until they stopped stinking and let them dry on a rock. I came back and the pelt is actually not hard like what usually happens when I leave the skin to dry. I scraped it and stretched it and it is actually quite soft. I gave it to my female as a gift. She quite likes it.

My mate continues to make marks on the bone. She indicated to me that she is tracking the shape of the moon. Apparently, it being bright or partial is not random, and it follows a pattern. I had never noticed it, but now that she points it out, it seems obvious. She also placed a stick in the ground, and the observation of shadows I made seems to not be random, either. She has recorded the phases of the shadows as well. It is very interesting.

Lightning struck a tree the other day. It created fire. A deer had got in the way and it got burned by the tree. I tried the meat and it was quite tasty. I noticed that the fire needs wood, and the more wood there is, the more the fire burns. I do not know what to do with this, but it is interesting.

My mate noticed that she can use vines to bind bundles of grass together. If she wraps the vines in the right way, they hold together in something I call a "knot." She uses these knots to make bundles of grass. We stack them up and then form a much nicer nest then just piles.

I noticed that certain rocks don't crumble when I hit them with other rocks, and instead create little chips. If I flake it carefully, I can create a very sharp edge. I can use it to cut small trees or branches down. I showed my female this and she found it extremely interesting.

My mate carved some branches into sharp points today. It dug very deep into the ground with a single thrust. I think I can use this to hunt animals better. She also used the vines and knots to create frames out of wood. I use them to hold my animal skins when I am turning them into pelts. They get bigger and require less scraping and stretching before they are soft. They also dry faster. This is very useful.

My mate has found that if she stacks little pebbles up, they create a sort of dish. This dish can be held together with wood frames, and then I can put stuff like our berries and vegetables in it. It saves a lot of space and prevents us from stepping on the berries. The dish idea has really inspired her, as well. She has found a way to wrap grass in the vines and create little grass dishes. They are very light. She gave one to me and I carry it with me to gather berries and vegetables. It makes gathering much faster. I have even more time now and it is much safer here than hunting.

Deer are not very smart, unlike my wolf friend. I watched one fall into a big hole. It died before it could get out of it. After it died, the wolf ate his fill, defending it from a tiger. I dragged the carcass away, and the wolf protected me from the tiger, even though it followed me. I butched it as usual, but I had an idea. I took some sharp sticks and put them in the pit. I used some other branches and covered it in leaves. It took many days, but I checked it one day and I found a dear dead, impaled on the sticks. It had been partially eaten, by, it looks like, a tiger. I have found several large holes and filled them with sticks and covered them. I check them every day when i hunt and gather.

My mate has noticed that days are getting shorter. It is also getting colder.

There is a small grove near my cave. It is full of fruits and berries. There is a patch of vegetables on the other side of the pond. The waters of the pond are very clear and full of fish. Using the sharp stick, I can stab a fish out of the water if I am very fast. My pits, that I call "traps," provide me with a regular supply of meat and fur. As long as I leave a guts pile out, the wolf, and now his mate and children, keep me safe. I spend only a few hours a day collecting food. Life is very plentiful. My female is pregnant. I have not seen another one like us in a long time. I spend a lot of time thinking and watching things. My self talks to me a lot and tells me what to notice. He is very good at finding interesting things.

Something interesting happened today. The big rock I use to cut down trees was not very sharp, so I was using the hard grey rock I usually use to sharpen it. When I was making small flakes along the edge, it creates yellow shiny bursts, as it usually does. I was sitting on a bundle of grass because it is comfortable, and a shiny yellow burst jumped into the bundle, and started to smoke. Thinking nothing of it, the wind picked up, and blew on me. The grass I was sitting on burst into flame. It was extremely scary. Soon, however, the fear faded and my self told me to try it again. I struck the stones together until yellow bursts jumped out. One eventually caught the grass and started to smoke. I blew on it to simulate the wind. It caught fire after a few blows. I threw some twigs from a tree on it. They eventually caught. The dead ones caught faster than the live ones. I showed my mate. She and I are extremely excited. The fire is warm and gives off light. It is getting darker for longer and light will be helpful.

We have lined the entire cave in furs. Our bed is fur. We hang a fur in front of the cave entrance. If we light a fire in the morning, when neither of us are in the cave, after the smoke disperses, the cave stays very warm throughout the night. The deer we catch provide too much meat for us to eat. After cutting into thin strips, I hang much of it in the cave on the wooden frames my mate makes. The smoke dries them out and they taste very tasty. We keep them in baskets in the cave. I am able to eat them many many nights after and they have not gone bad. It is very exciting. I do not even gather every day, anymore. My mate has noticed that the days are starting to get longer. We have lots of time to make things, now. I spend lots of time collecting wood for our fires.

I am very sad. My mate is very soon going to give birth. My mother did not survive giving birth to me. My father fed me for a while, but when I was very very young, he was killed by a tiger. I will be very sad if I lose my mate. It was very lonely before her. She makes me very happy. I will have a hard time raising our child by myself. I will probably get killed by a tiger. I hope she does not die.

My mate has given birth. I have a child now. She is healthy. Our daughter is also healthy. I am very happy.

I have built a structure. I cut a large branch and cut a hole in it. I put the stone cutting tool in it, and tied it in. This made it easier to chop down larger trees. I used the large trees and tied them together to make a shelter. I covered the roof in grass and mud. I keep my wood underneath it. When it rains, the wood stays dry, mostly. I spend much less time collecting wood, as I can store lots of it.

I do not like it when my mate leaves the cave. She must care for our child, and I must care for him when she gets water. I am afriad she will get hurt if I cannot escort her, so we all go to the pond. I am afraid of tigers getting her or my child. There is a creek up hill that feeds the pond. It does not continue after the pond. I used a scraper stick and made a creek, and connected it to the pond. Water now flows down the trench and next to our house. Neither of us need to leave the cave now.

While digging my trench, I came across some gloopy grey earth. It was not like the soil, and held together. I formed it into a ball and when it dried out, it still held shape. I decided to form a bowl out of it. It still held. Curious.

I am very sad today. I came to empty some waste in the gut pile, and one of my wolf friends is dead. It was not my first friend. It looks like it was one of his subordinates. He was killed by a tiger. I stripped his pelt, but I cannot bring myself to eat him. I buried his remains in a hole. I put a pile of rocks on the hole after I filled it in. The wolves are special to me. I turned his skin into a pelt, and I wear his fur now, to show my kinship with them.

I discovered something interesting today. It rained, and a lot of my wood became wet. I dug a hole and started a fire, and set the wood across the top to dry it out. i did not want the fire to get too big, so I put some wet twigs and leaves over the hole, and then put some gloopy grey earth, I call it "clay," on it, and left a little hole. The fire went out, but it continued to smoke and remained quite hot. I fed the wet logs into the small hole I left open until the hole was full to the top. I left it there for a while and gathered fresh wood. When I came back, it had stopped smoking. I broke off the gloop, which had grown quite firm, almost like stone. Curious. The wood had turned black and crumbly. Disheartened, thinking I destroyed usable wood, I built the daily fire. I threw a lump of the charred wood into the fire, and surprisingly, it burnt very well. I fed some more of the blackened char into it. It burned extremely hot, and did not produce much smoke.

My self continues to tell me to experiment with this clay. Today i made a fire, and put a lump of clay into it. when the fire burned off, I found the lump, and it had turned completely to stone. Curious.

I have made a very important discovery. I built a large bowl of clay, and built a fire inside it. I used my char wood lumps because they fit in it better. I let it burn off while I gathered and checked my traps. When I returned, the bowl was full of ash, but it had turned to stone. I had a stone bowl. that I could carry around. It was more delicate than stone, but it held shape well and was very sturdy. I filled it with water. It was water-tight. I can store water.

My mate and I spend much of our day making big clay bowls. We made a very large, tall, round one with a small opening on top. We filled it with our meat and then sealed the top with a plug of wet clay. It remained air-tight. We can store our meat for even longer before it goes bad, now. We spend most of our day making char and clay.

My mate had an idea today. We made a tall clay bowl and fired it until it was dry and hard. Then, we built a char fire at the bottom. We put a clay pot in the top. When the fire died, the clay pot was hard. We no longer need to build fires inside each of the shapes, we can put stuff in the tall bowl. I call it an "oven."

I have built an oven in the center of our cave. It has a large hole on top and holes in the sides. When we build a fire in the bottom, it radiates heat out into the entire cave. We can burn it at night as well as in the morning and there is no smoke to fill the cave.

I decided to build a separate structure to smoke our meat and skins in. It will make things easier. My mate said I should build it from clay because it would not burn down. I made a frame out of wood, and built a twig roof. I then covered the roof grass, and then layered clay on top of this. I then built the sides up in layers of clay. Once three walls were built, filled the structure with char and then layered clay up until it half-full. I then layered more clay on. At the bottom I cut out a little hole big enough for me to crawl into on all 4 sides, and lit the char. It burned for several days. When it finished, the whole structure was hard as stone. I now crawl in and hang my meats and skins, and then light a small fire underneath. When it finishes burning, I scrape the ash out and crawl back in. I can smoke much more meat and hide much faster, now.

My mate has made a discovery. She heated a rock up and dunked it into a pot full of water. The water got very hot and bubbled, producing a smoke that wasn't smoke. When the smoke hit your face, it turned to very hot water. It felt very good. The resulting hot water was very pleasant as well.

I am very scared right now. Several others like us have come by our cave. They were in awe of the stuff I have made. I showed them the daub of red mud on their foreheads and the too discovered their selves. They do not want to leave. There are a few other caves nearby. I do not want them to hurt us or steal from us. Maybe if I feed them, they will not wish to hurt my mate, my daughter, and I.

I am teaching them the things I have learned. They are in awe. They do not want to hurt me, I think. They wish to learn more. They spend most of their days hunting and trapping and making things. They often give me gifts. I no longer need to collect materials anymore, they do it for me in exchange for food and things we make.

We are working together. There are now three wolf packs who are sustained by our gut piles. We built a very large clay smoke hut. We have built another clay hut, and we store our jars full of food in it. One of the women in the group watches the hut to make sure people only take their pots. She also takes care of our daughter, as well as her own son. The other men and I check the traps daily, gather food, and butcher the animals. The women make baskets and pots.

One of the women in the group dropped some old berries into some hot water today. The berries were too far gone to be eaten. She smushed them in her hands and rinsed her hands in the pot, so it was full of berry mush. She then dropped in a hot stone. After the water had cooled she had a sip. It tasted very good. She did not vomit and her stool was firm afterward, as well. She did not feel ill. We now turn all of our fruit that is about to go bad into this brew. It goes very well with the smoked meat.

One of the men in what I now call our "tribe" has discovered something interesting. One of the big pots of fruit mash had a white film on top and was bubbling. Instead of pouring it out, he left it. After a while, it stopped bubbling. He skimmed the white film off the top with a grass brush. He tasted the resulting liquid, and it tasted different. It also created a pleasing after-effect of euphoria. He drank too much and vomited, but if he drank only a little, it was very pleasant. Many of us now brew this. It makes for fun times at night around the communal fire.

Another group of a fewwanderers have settled with us. We have taught them our ways, from the red daub initiation, to the culture of discovery. Without any more caves, we built clay huts for them.