Did Ancient Humans Hear the Gods? Prehistory and the Bicameral Mind

In our so-called ‘enlightened’ age, mysticism, prophecy, and divine revelation are often dismissed as relics of a pre-modern world – fascinating curiosities, perhaps, but ultimately the product of ‘misguided’ beliefs. But here's the catch: just because many of us no longer believe in the ‘divine’ doesn’t mean the people of the past didn’t genuinely believe they were hearing gods. 

This question becomes especially intriguing when we look at prehistory, a time before written records, where belief systems are much harder to decipher. This brings us to one central question: did ancient people actually hear the gods? 

To clarify, this is not a debate about whether gods exist or existed. Rather, it’s about the nature of consciousness itself: when someone in the ancient world claimed to hear a god, what were they truly experiencing? Did they hear divine voices, or were these voices something else – a product of their minds, unrecognised as such? 

The Challenge of Understanding Ancient Experiences 

The historical record is rich with strange and powerful phenomena across cultures – voices, visions, commands, and prophecies. From the Oracle of Delphi to the biblical prophets, from the dream-visions in ancient Mesopotamia to the whispered instructions of the gods in Homer’s epics, these experiences were treated not as hallucinations but as real, authoritative, and often decisive forces shaping belief, action, and power. But how were these experiences understood by the people who lived them? 

One figure who grappled profoundly with this question was Julian Jaynes, a psychologist and researcher at Yale and Princeton. His 1976 book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind proposed a revolutionary theory: consciousness, as we know it today, is a relatively recent development, emerging between 2000 BCE and 1000 BCE – not as an innate trait, but as a learned phenomenon. 

The Bicameral Mind: A Revolution in Human Cognition 

At the heart of Jaynes' theory is the radical idea that introspective consciousness – simply put, our ability to reflect on our own thoughts – was a cultural and neurological shift that occurred only within the last few thousand years. 

So, what existed before this shift? Jaynes argued that ancient humans experienced what he called the ‘bicameral mind’. In this state, individuals didn’t perceive their emotions, desires, or decisions as arising from within themselves. Rather, these inner experiences were interpreted as external commands – often attributed to the voices of gods. According to Jaynes, when people of antiquity spoke of hearing divine instructions, they weren’t speaking metaphorically. They were genuinely experiencing auditory hallucinations, processed by one part of the brain and obeyed by another. 

The term ‘bicameral’ (meaning ‘two chambers’) refers to a mental division where one part of the brain – linked with language production – acted as the ‘speaking’ voice, issuing commands, while the other part – responsible for processing and action – obeyed those commands without recognising them as self-generated. In modern neurological terms, Jaynes associated the right hemisphere of the brain (which governs spatial awareness and imagination) with the generation of these ‘voices’, while the left hemisphere (linked to language and action) dutifully followed without self-reflection. 

Prehistoric Evidence: Rituals, Voices, and Divine Communication 

Though we lack written records from prehistory, archaeological and anthropological evidence offers fascinating glimpses into how ancient minds may have functioned. Early rituals, religious practices, and mythologies provide hints of a mind that experienced the world in a way very different from our own, thus allowing us to apply, or at least view, prehistoric experience through Jaynes theory. 

Consider the cave paintings of the Upper Palaeolithic period, such as those found in Lascaux, France. These murals, depicting animals, hunters, and symbolic scenes, were often found in deep, dark caves, spaces that seem to have held spiritual significance. Applying Jaynes’ theory, these caves might have acted as psychological sanctuaries, where early humans could enter trance-like states and ‘hear’ the voices of gods or spirits. The act of painting might not have been seen merely as artistic expression, but as an obedient response to divine will. 

Later prehistoric shamanic practices also provide an opportunity to apply and test Jaynes’ hypothesis. Shamans in hunter-gatherer societies often claimed to communicate with spirits by entering trance states, where they reported hearing voices or receiving divine visions. Archaeological findings, such as ritual objects, cave art, and signs of altered states induced by hallucinogens, align with the idea that early humans may have experienced auditory hallucinations interpreted as divine communication. 

Bicameral Mind in Ancient Mythology 

In addition to cave art and shamanic practices, Jaynes’ theory finds further resonance in ancient mythologies. The tales of gods speaking to mortals are common across cultures. In Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, gods frequently communicate directly with human characters, either through dreams or voice commands. These interventions might reflect a society still influenced by the bicameral mind, where people were accustomed to receiving authoritative voices – whether from gods, kings, or revered leaders. 

In ancient Mesopotamia, the Epic of Gilgamesh depicts the hero’s divine encounters, where Gilgamesh, the king of Uruk, is guided by gods through dreams and direct conversation. Similarly, in ancient Egypt, Pharaohs were often believed to receive divine messages or visions, reinforcing the idea that the line between human cognition and divine communication was blurred. 

The Breakdown: The Shift to Consciousness 

However, as Jaynes argued, this bicameral mind began to break down between 2000 BCE and 1000 BCE, coinciding with the end of the Bronze Age and the start of the Iron Age. But why did this shift occur? A close reading of Jaynes offers a compelling answer. 

This era saw the rise of alphabetic writing systems – particularly among the Phoenicians around 1200 BCE – as well as the growth of increasingly complex societies. These developments, Jaynes argued, encouraged a new kind of mental life: one that fostered introspection, internal dialogue, and self-reflection. The invention of writing allowed humans to externalise their thoughts in a stable, permanent medium. This ability to record inner experiences – beliefs, intentions, reflections – likely played a pivotal role in the emergence of modern consciousness. No longer dependent on external ‘voices’ for guidance, individuals began to interpret their thoughts as their own. 

At the same time, the emergence of early forms of ‘formalised’ governance introduced clearer structures of authority, expectation, and social order. With society itself providing commands and frameworks for behaviour, the need for divine voices may have diminished. In this way, the growing standardisation of experience, through language, law, and leadership, contributed to the fading of the bicameral mind. 

However, Jaynes did not believe this mental structure vanished entirely. On the contrary, he suggested that residues of bicameralism persist even into the present. Moments of religious revelation, prophetic vision, or auditory hallucination, such as those reported by figures like Joan of Arc or Martin Luther, are, in Jaynes’s view, echoes of a once-dominant mode of cognition. While these experiences were once common and culturally normative, they are now rare and typically arise during periods of extreme stress, isolation, or intense spiritual experience. They are, he argued, remnants of an older mental world, not components of everyday consciousness. 

A New Lens on Human Consciousness in the Prehistoric World 

Jaynes’s theory of the bicameral mind offers a compelling lens for understanding the evolution of human consciousness – from external commands to self-reflective thinking. By examining the voices of gods in ancient societies, we gain insight not only into the past but also into the origins of what it means to be human. 

Through this perspective, the ancient world is not merely a collection of superstitions and primitive beliefs, but a complex mental landscape where gods, voices, and visions were part of the natural human experience. As we continue to study prehistory and early civilisation, Jaynes’s work challenges us to rethink the evolution of consciousness, and to recognise that our ancestors’ perceptions of reality were shaped by a mind that functioned very differently from our own. 

And so, we return to our question: Did ancient people actually hear the gods? The answer, evidence suggests, is that they certainly thought they did. Whether these experiences were divine voices or psychological phenomena, the belief in hearing gods was pervasive and real. It serves as a reminder that ancient minds perceived the world through a lens vastly different from ours, where the boundary between the human mind and the divine was far more fluid than we might imagine. 

Bibliography 

Cavanna, Andrea E., and others, ‘The “Bicameral Mind” 30 Years on: a Critical Reappraisal of Julian Jaynes' Hypothesis’, Functional Neurology, 22.1 (2007), 11-15. 

Donald, Merlin, Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition (Harvard University Press, 1991). 

Greenspan, Stanley, The First Idea: How Symbols, Language, and Intelligence Evolved from Our Primate Ancestors to Modern Humans (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2004). 

Jaynes, Julian, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000). 

Mijuskovic, B. L., ‘The Bicameral Mind, the Abyss, and Underworlds’, in Consciousness and Loneliness: Theoria and Praxis (Leiden: Brill, 2019), pp. 365–402. 

Morriss, James E., ‘Reflections on Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind: An Essay Review’, ETC: A Review of General Semantics, 35.3 (1978), 314–27.