Personation of the Dead in Ancient China

Michael Carr, Computational Analyses of Asian and African Languages, March 1985, 24, 1-107.

Abstract: The unusual practice of personating dead ancestors is a several thousand year old puzzle that has never been fully solved. No one has ever successfully explained how and why personation began and ended. The pieces of this personation puzzle can now be put together with Julian Jaynes’ bicameral hypothesis for the origins of consciousness. The evidence concerning personation of the dead strongly suggests that consciousness – “consciousness” as we understand it today – did not develop in China until sometime after 1000 B.C.

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