Why did many religious leaders-Moses, Old Testament prophets, Zoroaster-claim they heard divine voices? Why do ancient civilizations exhibit key similarities, e.g., the "living dead" (treating the dead as if they were still alive); "speaking idols" (care and feeding of effigies); monumental mortuary architecture and "houses of gods" (pyramids, ziggurats, temples)? How do we explain strange behaviour such as spirit possession, speaking in tongues, channelling, hypnosis, and schizophrenic hallucinations? Are these lingering vestiges of an older mentality?
Brian J. McVeigh answers these riddles by updating "bicameralism." First proposed by the psychologist Julian Jaynes, this theory postulates that an earlier mentality existed: a "human" (the brain''s left hemisphere) heard voices of "gods" or "ancestors" (the brain''s right hemisphere). Therefore, ancient religious texts reporting divine voices were recounting of audio-visual hallucinations-a method of social control when early
