Early Civilisation By the time of the great civilisations of Egypt, Greece and Rome, people lived a very different life. They spent much more of their time indoors, and there wasn't the same idea of the tribe; people lived in extended family groups. People had much more specialised roles in society, they found life easy enough to waste lives in wars, some of them could even write. Cities. Architecture. Ships. Maps. Metal tools.
Some developments are more important than others. These are the use of money, organised religion, the change in the art they produced. These things indicate a moving away from the oneness of earlier times. For example, small chunks of metal (coins) can be traded for work, which indicates a higher level of abstraction than previously. The gods have also receded; the god of the sea no longer is the sea, rather he lives at the bottom of and controls the sea. The god of the sun doesn't beam down sunlight from himself, he just rides a chariot through the sky, and the light comes from the shining wheels of the chariot. Dionysus, god of wine and parties, is not the party or wine itself, rather a half-god half-human (product of one of Zeus' affairs, I think) who really likes to get pissed with his mates, and so does constantly. There are no gods of the tiger, or of the seagull, animals are seen as independent beings from the gods. The art is dramatically different; the artist tries to mimic reality, rather than represent a tribal experience. More on this later.
The gods rarely meddle in human affairs unless they are bored or insulted; they prefer to sit atop their mountain (Olympus) and have a good time. If some human starts acting up they might toy with them a little, but other than that they don't bother. Zeus (father of most Greek gods, god of thunder & lightning) had many affairs with many human and half-human women, and his wife spent quite a lot of her time chasing those women down and doing horrible things to them. For the first time the people do not interact directly with their gods; they must rely on the priests as the 'mouth-piece' of the gods. Temples are built; they are special places just for worshipping in, another example of the specialisation influence. For the people of this time, the gods existed, but all the things that they had done, all the actual evidence of their existence, was legend. The people 'knew' they existed but the gods were not as 'close' to them as earlier on in history.
In Ancient Egypt the king was a god, directly descended from Osiris, the god of the sun and bringer of all life, indicating that the Egyptian consciousness was closer to their gods than later on in Greek/Roman times. By the time of Greece and Rome there was no king, but there was still a 'ruling class' who got to run the show. Everyone knew they weren't gods, but they were still better than the ordinary human.
In many ways the people of this time were very similar today, but much of their consciousness is still external. A great example of this is the beings the Greeks called 'The Furies'. These are extremely unpleasant demon-like monsters which take great delight in torturing people. If you did something bad, like murder or whatever, then the gods would set these Furies on you, which would chase you, and attempt to rip you to pieces; attempt to cause you 'outward' pain. Today we have internalised the Furies, we now call them a conscience; guilt, we feel bad inside. The people of this time didn't have a conscience; it was an outside influence (the Furies) which made them feel bad, it wasn't something inside their head at all.
As I mentioned briefly earlier, art has changed dramatically. Especially after Egypt there are statues of people being made, paintings of sex, parties and war are being done. There are realistic people in these images, not just representations. The images are of personal experiences rather than group experiences. There is little reflection and commentary on the world, as today though.
The main idea of this time is that that the average person not as close to the world (gods), and that the world and the gods are not the same things any more. However, the gods are still very active; guilt, floods, a bad harvest, the sun are still products of the gods but these events are not the gods in person.
Towards the end of the Roman Empire, Christianity became the dominant religion. This introduced another shift in consciousness. More responsibility had to be taken for ones actions, the idea of sin is quite strong in the religion. According to this belief system, there is only one god who controls everything and sees everything. The persecution and rigidity that this structure imposed on Europe delayed the next stage of evolution for several centuries, but when it did happen it came with a bang. Once the Industrial revolution hit, within a lifetime the world changed forever.
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