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Cellular life on Earth started some four billion years ago, taking nearly two billion years to evolve from protocells to the first prokaryotic cells, including ancient archaea and bacteria that resemble modern counter parts within those cellular domains. More complex eukaryotic cells evolved via symbiotic interactions of prokaryotic cells, representing multicellular cells within a cell chimera-like cellular consortia. The first eukaryotic cells emerged some 2–1.5 billion years ago, which implies that it took nearly two billion years to get from prokaryotic to eukaryotic cells. Our cellular basis of consciousness (CBC) model states that all living cells utilize cellular sentience to survive and evolve. We argue that the prolonged timeline to evolve eukaryotic cells from prokaryotic cells was necessitated by the complex level of evolutionary novelty required to assem ble unitary consciousness from several formerly in depen dent …