Originally Posted by tore

That's well and fine, but it seems a little naive to me. The rough history of man I've heard is that we started walking on two which freed our hands which is important as we're tool users and we switched from a diet based on plants to a diet based on meat. You get a lot more energy per pound of meat and you don't need a huge stomach to digest enough to keep you going. You also don't have to spend most your day foraging and then resting as you digest, something other plant diet apes have to.

Basically, we switched to a source of nutrition which allowed our brains to grow big and we had our hands free and we also got a lot of free time on our hands. When you don't have to spend all day getting food, you can spend it developing culture.

The people you talk about who lived in locations of plenty, I'm not sure what species of man you're talking about, but if they had a culture (could switch off being nomadic and choose to settle), then I'm thinking they were probably already self-aware and had been for a long time.

Even Coco was self-aware!