[Mr. Nobody]

Trace the history of human consciousness and find that it follows the path of biological evolution, unless you think that our ancestors possessed the same amount of awareness that you have now.
Consciousness or orientation and discovery of the self, emerged when life tried to understand death (Read Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell for the roots of all religion). Awareness of a beginning and an end and the limited lifespan in between invented creationists myths. Different religions evolved within distinct and separate cultures but share the common themes of birth, life, death, resurection.
Hence I link consciousness with the moment ape realized his mortality aside from his bioligically programmed survival instinct and formed societies
I view our consciousness as an abboration of intelligence as it does not serve a natural purpose. It presents an unfortunate and counter productive side effect of super organization but in the end perhaps a dead end and not the pinnacle of creation at all. 10,000 years of memory on a grain of sand within 13 billion years of infinite space cannot be called success. We may lose the ability of self awareness or trade ever more of it for the security of the hive, as it appears that this super organizm subjects the member for its own survival. Perhaps all this talk about consciousness and self awareness, god, and whatever will disapear into the dark and give way to the human ant hill.
Understand your history, understand nature and conclude:
Mind from matter and matter over mind