Which came first: humans or consciousness?

“Ever since Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, evolution has been the grand unifying theory of biology. Yet one of our most important biological traits, consciousness, is rarely studied in the context of evolution. Theories of consciousness come from religion, from philosophy, from cognitive science, but not so much from evolutionary biology. Maybe that’s why so few theories have been able to tackle basic questions such as: What is the adaptive value of consciousness? When did it evolve and what animals have it?…”
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"It’s colloquial to say, “when I came into this world…”  Actually, we all came out of this world, the way fruit comes out of a tree.  The consciousness for our existence already existed, just as the DNA of a tree already exists within the seed.  Whereas the human is, by nature, one with the whole cosmos, our consciousness specializes in one-pointed awareness.  We see sight and hear sound, but don’t realize that doing so is actually limiting our consciousness from the infinite web that really exists."

"There is no ‘first’ in the Universe.  Everything that has ever been created is a spontaneous occurrence.  Humans create consciousness as a concept, and consciousness creates humans through our human minds.  They are two sides of the same coin.  It’s like asking, “what came first, the chicken or the egg?  Perhaps the egg was just a chicken’s way of making more chickens, or perhaps the chicken was just the egg’s way of making more eggs!  The Universe exists through simultaneity."

"Humans had to come first in order to create ‘consciousness’.  Quite simply, there was never such a construct as ‘consciousness’ until humans created it.  Animals, trees, planets, the Universe, etc, all existed prior to humans, and existed as a single, self-sustaining system.  It is the distinctly human characteristic of stepping back and creating separation that gives birth to a term for this self-sustaining system and its parts:  Consciousness."

Hypotheses About the Origins of Consciousness:
1. Consciousness has always existed, because God is conscious and eternal.
2. Consciousness began when the universe formed, around 13.7 billion years ago (panpsychism).
3. Consciousness began with single-celled life, around 3.7 billion years ago (Reber).
4. Consciousness began with multicellular plants, around 850 million years ago.
5. Consciousness began when animals such as jellyfish got thousands of neurons, around 580 million years ago.
6. Consciousness began when insects and fish developed larger brains with about a million neurons (honeybees) or 10 million neurons (zebrafish) around 560 million years ago.
7. Consciousness began when animals such as birds and mammals developed much larger brains with hundreds of millions of neurons, around 200 million years ago.
8. Consciousness began with humans, homo sapiens, around 200,000 years ago.
9. Consciousness began when human culture became advanced, around 3,000 years ago (Julian Jaynes).
10. Consciousness does not exist, as it is just a scientific mistake (behaviorism} or a “user illusion” (Daniel Dennett)….”
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