Maybe I'm digressing, but my attention was drawn to the OP's opening statemente about Julian Jaynes - The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Very interesting book indeed. I got to read it through Hofstadter and Daniel Dennet, while apparently you've gone the other way. The central thesis of the book - that consciousness as we know it is a recent accomplishment in human history - is hard to swallow, but the author does present it in a well documented, rhetorically convincing way.
If you haven't yet read it, I would advise you to check out Daniel Dennett's "Brainstorms". Less archaeo-speculative than Jaynes', more focussed on the "modern" human mind, so to say. Recommended.
