Rome Wasn't Built in a Day, Nor By Conscious Human Beings

"Let us review where we are...We have been brought to the conclusion that consciousness is not what we generally think it is. It is not to be confused with reactivity. It is not involved in hosts of perceptual phenomena. It is not involved in the performance of skills and often hinders their execution. It need not be involved in speaking, writing, listening, or reading. It does not copy down experience, as most people think. Consciousness is not at all involved in signal learning, and need not be involved in the learning of skills or solutions, which can go on without any consciousness whatever. It is not necessary for making judgments or in simple thinking. It is not the seat of reason, and indeed some of the most difficult instances of creative reasoning go on without any attending consciousness. And it has no location except an imaginary one! The immediate question therefore is, does consciousness exist at all? But that is the problem of the next chapter. Here it is only necessary to conclude that consciousness does not make all that much difference to a lot of our activities. If our reasonings have been correct, it is perfectly possible that there could have existed a race of [humans] who spoke, judged, reasoned, solved problems, indeed did most of the things that we do, but who were not conscious at all. This is the important and in some ways upsetting notion that we are forced to conclude at this point. Indeed I have begun in this fashion, and place great importance on this opening chapter, for unless you are here convinced that a civilization without consciousness is possible, you will find the discussion that follows unconvincing and paradoxical.”

Julian Jaynes is addressing a contemporary view of consciousness that dates the appearance of human consciousness millions of years ago, in some form. In this view, the appearance of tool use and making, agriculture, husbandry, building, counting, etc., constitute the appearance and substance of human consciousness. Even using a fully developed culture or civilization as qualified to be called the fruit of human consciousness, that still puts us back to 10,000 or more years ago. Obviously, ancient Egypt, the city-states of ancient Greece, the kingdoms of ancient India and China, were the products of conscious human beings. They didn't think the same way, maybe, but they were clearly conscious. 

Right?