Consciousness as pre-linguistic internalized listener that filters 'meaning space' non-destructively for social familiarity-alignment markers to dramatically accelerate language and cultural learning

This article proposes a novel, unified, empirically informed, theoretical outline of the purpose and function of human consciousness in both children and prehistorical, pre-linguistic humans. It is argued here that human consciousness, as an "internalized listener" in pre-linguistic humans both modern and ancient, functions to select—from essentially random, spongiform thoughts (messages)—those thoughts that bear familiarity or affiliative-alignment markers to this internalized listener (an internalized 'we' listener). This dramatically reduces the meaning space for both ancient and modern pre-linguistic humans, allowing them to acquire language and social meaning very quickly—a necessity likely as human communities began to grow and become unwieldy for non-linguistic coordination.