ABSTRACT
The thesis of this book is that an implicit and cryptic modern day dualism has evolved from a primeval awareness of death. It is proposed that the emerging and persisting fear of the loss of one’s personal identity still pollutes current mentalist theories of psychological function—particularly as they are evidenced in current cognitive psychologies. To completely understand how such a thing could have happened it is useful to look back over the ages to determine the context in which the awareness and fear of death first emerged. The history of the concept of death is intimately related to the evolution of the cognitive processes that characterize the modern human—Homo sapiens sapiens. 1 In such a context, profound questions must be answered. These questions include:
When did people begin to think?
When did they begin to appreciate death?
Was death conceived as a negative thing?
When did they begin to think of the soul (mind) as a separable aspect of existence?
When did they begin to invent the supernatural?
What did symbolic art mean to them?
When did modern cognitive processes evolve?
Did our hominid predecessors exhibit the same cognitive capability as modern humans?
If so, what explains the uniqueness of our modern subspecies?
Can material remains tell us about the intangible aspects of behavior?
If so, can we infer anything about cognition from the behavioral evidence?
What evidence is available that could possibly answer such questions?
