Joseph Campbell thought the greatest invention was the brick. It allowed mankind to make "shrines" for ancestors, enshrine certain values that were valuable to the tribe, classification friend or foe, creationist, evolutionists etc. This allowed for handing down "models" behavior as the Hero Epics generation to generation.
Carl Jung expanded this to archetypes. Behavior types that exists at the subconscious level.
Current Neurological Research on short term memory, brings new questions to old concepts. Such as "does free agency even exist". given the physiological nature of the nervous system. Some researchers suggest that our "selves" are rebuilt each day before awakening, somewhat on the Jung models.
If your interested. Christof Koch institute is deep into this. "Methods in Neuronal Modeling" and "Biophysics of Computation"
