If you want to get a good picture of what those old household idols were about check out this book by Julian James called “The Origin of Consciousness in the breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”
Basically James fills in the blanks left by Nietzsche. Nietzche was famous for among other things saying that philosophy comes in when religion/theology breaks down. He said this was the case of classical 5th -3rd century bc greeks.
But having said that, Nietzsche did go into more detail. What precisely came before—and why did it break down.
For one thing. He didn’t have the data.
James does.
For a really eye opening read —check out
http://www.amazon.com/Origin-Consciousness-Breakdown-Bicameral-Mind/dp/0618057072
Got that book for Christmas! Just read the intro and beginning the 1st chapter - very meaty!
The writer didn't go back in time far enough to find humans like he imagined.
Once we began dealing with the dead we were no longer bound up in the same sort of autistic spectrum disorders ~ e.g. Aspergers Syndrome ~ that seem to be the plight of even the highest animals ~ except maybe the cats ~ they do know death.
I think that it's not 20,000 years ago, but 400,000 years ago, 20 times further, that we need to look for the time when we no longer let the "voices" rule us. Then we turned things around and began running on our own symbolic images.
Wow, good to see, that’s not a new title!