Evolution of the mind

Over a period of billions of years, evolution took us from single celled organisms to monkeys with arms and legs fur. So why is it that over a very short time, our brains suddenly developed consciousness, language, creativity and spirituality? This is a summary of the most widely held scientific theory available to us, and the only one that is currently able to be supported by obtainabvle evidence.

To put it simply: it was psychoactive drugs.
Going into a bit more detail, it went something like this…
Back to when humans still consisted of two species (H. sapiens sapiens and H. sapiens neanderthalensis), the world was still largely uncolonised by us. Every time we moved into a new area, we’d try pretty much every plant we would find to test for edibility. It was therefore inevitable that many plants that we ate would give us hallucinations. Hallucinations of godlike beings, other worlds and profound realisations. No doubt this is what started religion, but we can go deeper than that. When we went from hunter/gatherers to nomads, we started keeping livestock, the first of which were the aurochs (ancestors of the cow). And with the cow came the dung. And with the dung came the mushroom. Much of our evidence points to a time when the psilocybe mushroom grew I most parts of the world (before ‘The great thawing’). In small doses, psilocybin has the ability to sharpen eyesight, an obvious benefit. At larger doses, the mushroom increases creativity and a sense of community. At even larger doses comes the contact with the spirit world. Psilocybin also has a profound impact on Warnicke’s and Broca’s areas of the brain (those responsible for language). If you look at cave paintings, the earliest form of art, you notice that the paintings are always largely out of scale and depict mostly mythical creatures (including the famous therianthropes). In addition, if you look at a cave painting in real life it appears as though the artist has seen the subject in the rock and brought it out using paints. Does this not sound like the works of someone who is experiencing visions?
This is an extreme summary of the theory.

If you want know more please ask. Better yet you can look at the research yourself.
Graham Hancock’s book ‘Supernatural’ is great for introducing the concept, and has heaps of references to various anthropolgists, theorists and psychologists.
But primarily, if you want any real sense of what we could potentially be dealing with, I’d recommend all the works by Terrence McKenna, and if you’re unfamiliar with this great man, I’d urge you to go onto Youtube right now, type in his name, and listen to some of the things he has to say.