emFirst Minds Caterpillars, 'Karyotes, and Consciousnessem presents a novel theory of the origins of mind and consciousness dubbed the Cellular Basis of Consciousness CBC. It argues that sentience emerged with life itself. The most primitive unicellular species of bacteria are conscious, though it is a sentience of a primitive kind. They have minds, though they are tiny and limited in scope. Hints that cells might be conscious can be found in the writings of a few cell biologists but a fully developed theory has never been put forward before. pOther approaches to the origins of consciousness are examined and shown to be seriously or fatally flawed, specifically approaches based on a the assumption that minds are computational and can be captured by an Artificial Intelligence, b efforts to discover the neuro-correlates of mental experiences and, c looking for consciousness in less complex species by identifying those that have precursors of those neuro-correlates. Reber shows how each o