Mushrooms and Early Human Evolution

[Mr. Now]

Terance McKenna is dead. He says in his writing that language and dominance of other species becomes possible for humanity only after the habit of eating certain mushrooms becomes widespread.

Please try to spend some time examining his entire thesis before commenting.


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Perhaps the most famous of Terence McKenna's theories and observations is his explanation for the origin of the human mind and culture. McKenna theorized that as the North African jungles receded toward the end of the most recent ice age, giving way to grasslands, a branch of our tree-dwelling primate ancestors left the branches and took up a life out in the open—following around herds of ungulates, nibbling what they could along the way.
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Among the new items in their diet were psilocybin-containing mushrooms growing in the dung of these ungulate herds. McKenna supposed that psilocybin's verified enhancement of visual acuity was instrumental in the human dominance over prey.
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He also argued that the effects of slightly larger doses, including a physical sexual arousal—and in still larger doses, ecstatic hallucinations and glossolalia—gave evolutionary advantages to those tribes who partook of it.
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There were many changes caused by the introduction of this drug to the primate diet. McKenna theorizes, for instance, that synesthesia (the blurring of boundaries between the senses) caused by psilocybin led to the development of spoken language: the ability to form pictures in another person's mind through the use of vocal sounds.

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The Ideas of Terance McKenna

[yukoncpa]

Hi, Mr. Now

This is very interesting, but it reminded me of how cats produce an LSD like substance in their poop to confound mice. Production of this substance may have been favored by natural selection:

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because an infected, hallucinating rodent would be more easily captured by a cat." In other words, schizophrenia in humans may be a side effect of T. gondii's attempt to set cats up with a steady supply of tripping mice, the better to ensure its own reproductive success.



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The straightdope

[Mr. Now]

Great link, thanks for that.