meritocrat

Which of the known hominid species would have been the first to have been truly conscious or sentient (if 'consciousness in this instance is defined as being able to display abstract thought or understand the world around themselves)?

Would it be homo ergaster/erectus?

Jesse

No way of knowing really, and anyway the definition of "consciousness" would have to be refined, but I'd guess that what we'd recognize as "abstract thought" didn't appear until the time humans began creating art and producing technological innovations on timescales of a few thousand years or less (homo erectus produced essentially identical stone blades for millions of years). So, probably not until Cro-Magnons, possibly Neanderthals. Some interesting speculation on this subject can be found in the book The Prehistory of the Mind: The Cognitive Origins of Art and Science by Steven Mithen.