[angiosperm]

By the time you were 4, you had already absorbed much of the structure of your parents' language, including its models of self.

People were not less intelligent in the past, but they knew less, and had a radically smaller fund of inventions, including mental models and practices, to draw upon. Late speculation about "hypnosis" and "hallucinations" have to be understood as analogies. We know with certainty, anyway, that notions of gods and sacrifice were invented at some particular time, and passed along. And, we know it was common in many places to perceive carved figures talking.

In 12ky, if we don't eliminate ourselves, we will certainly have many inventions that we will be unable to understand life without, and be left to try to imagine it.