The first task is to clarify the meaning of the term archetype. Jung described archetypes in various ways, some of them apparently contradicting others. But the strong trend of his views has turned out to be very close to the structure of brain-and-psyche as the modern sciences understand them. In Chapter 2, to articulate what an archetype is, we shall use language as a model: an inherited ability that differs in its expression from one society to another, that begins to manifest vigorously when a child is about three years old, whose neural substrate can be identified in the brain, and which has precursors — sociality, communication, grooming — in the behavior of all primates.

          In Chapter 3 we trace the development of three mental modules other than language as they manifest in humans, non-human primates, and lower animals. These modules show huge correspondences across species. What sets human consciousness apart appears to the way these several modules have been able to communicate with one another, since our ancestors learned they could use language for matters unrelated to grooming and alliance building. Most intriguingly, at the moment the modern human mind came into existence, some 40,000 years ago, our ancestors began a vigorous pursuit of altered states of consciousness. We became the symbol-using primate, and the best evidence for this is in the elaborately painted caves that date from the last Ice Age.

          In the fourth chapter, we take up the question of how archetypes that are by definition universally human take on forms that are distinctively different from culture to culture. Again the parallel with language is apt; for, while all humans have the language capacity, linguistic forms differ widely from one another. Every archetypal capability undergoes the same sort of socio-cultural shaping that language does. We may trace the emergence of divergent socializations and distinctive customs from the interaction of mothers with their infants. Indeed, it has been found that each primate species to have evolved is more complex than the last, undergoes a longer mother-infant socialization, and derives more from the socialization process. We end the chapter by applying these conclusions to an archetypal form Jungians are quite familiar with, since it comes from Greek mythology: the figure of Athena.