From what little I've read on the internet, Jaynes wasn't so much a crackpot as much as merely heterodox.
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The major problem with Jaynes theory is that I can think of no way to test or falsify it.
I can, and this is the main reason I don't quite buy Jaynes' ideas (although I do agree that they are intriguing). There are still plenty of people living in isolated areas of the Amazon and New Guinea and the like that have minimal contact with the "civilized world". I would expect that if Jaynes' ideas were correct then we should see noticeable differences in the "consciousness" of some of these people.
Of course, one could argue that even minimul contact is enough to cause the bicameral mind to break down, but if the bicameral state is so delicate I find it hard to believe that it could have lasted as the normal human condition until the the beginning of the 1st millenium BCE.
Another possibility is animal research. If it could be demonstrated that the higher primates have an human-like consciousness, just less well-developed, that, too, would be a falsification of Jaynes' theory.
I admit, though, as interesting and intriguing as I find Jaynes' theory, I would be disappointed if it were eventually confirmed (for philosophical reasons).
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