Earliest recorded uses of psychedelic mushrooms date back to 3,000 years ago in Mesoamerican cultures (Aztecs, Maya, & Mixtec). These early civilizations created ritual and rite by supplementing with psychedelic fungal types during spiritual ceremonies; Aztecs often referring to them as “flesh of the gods”, denoting heavenly connection to powers beyond time and space.
As the line of time is reversed, evidence is fragile and easily erased as we traverse back 1,000’s of years past Central American cultures. As such, we are left only with curious deductions based off current epochal experience in surmising histories spanning back to our humble beginnings in east Africa. Considering the mystery of our not so ordinary departure from the animal kingdom, the search for plausible answers leads us to consider fungal influence as nothing short of a magical explanation.
According to famed thinker and ethnobotanist Terrence McKenna, accidental and perhaps intentional consumption of psilocybin containing mushrooms played significant role in the evolution of human cognition and consciousness. It’s hard to discredit that early proto-humans consumed mushrooms increasingly as we emerged from treetops and explored new vistas of savannah land. As our early homo genus transitioned in habitat, climate cycles were concomitantly shifting increasingly to wet and dry cycles; perfect for the thriving of fungal varieties. It can be surmised that chance dosages from early human foraging led to calories, other nutritional benefit, and instances of psilocybin induced “tripping”. Repeated chance, and perhaps intentional consumption and aforementioned benefits surely ensured continued exposures and may have ushered in indelible neural structural changes to hominid brains creating the rubicon rifts between prior and improved versions of our species.
Effects of Psilocybin Mushrooms
- Increased Visual Acuity – Better vision undoubtably leads to augmented hunting and foraging success; ultimately greater chances of survival and replication.
- Language & Creativity – Increased sensory input and abstract experience could be responsible for higher developments of language and creative problem solving.
- Social & Cultural Development – Communal experience and connection during this experience could be responsible for tighter groups and social bonds (a sense of oneness), and possibly fuel more structured bonding and organizing practices known as religion.
- Higher Libido – Heightened feelings of oneness and sensory perception could also have resulted in increased incidences and success of sexual encounters and reproduction.
- Fear Extinction – Psilocybin increases neural plasticity in ways of reorganizing or forming new neural connections around experience; possibly even rewiring past maladaptive ones.
- Empathy – Inherent in the concept of oneness or unity, experiences with psilocybin can dissolve perceived barriers that separate us from other humans.,
- Leadership – Combining aforementioned traits of increased acuity of the senses, intuition, fear extinction, empathy, and augmented abilities to communicate and solve problems, psilocybin could have been the “magic” supplementation driving leadership and resulting progress at orders of magnitude never seen before on this planet.
Ecological Context of Mushroom Proliferation and Human Brain Development
During the Pleistocene 2.6MM-11,700 years ago, East Africa experienced significant climate fluctuations of wet and dry periods influencing vegetation and fungal thrivings. As forests receded and savannah’s expanded, early hominins (habilis & erectus) adapted to foraging in these new opportunistic lands. Although there can never be direct evidence for McKenna’s Stoned Ape hypothesis, the correlation between climate change, expanded foraging and inexplicable brain volume doubling within a relative short time appears to be more than simple coincidence or chance.
Genus Homo Emergence
- Homo habilis: 2.5MM years ago; 500-700cc brain volume.
- Homo erectus: 1.9MM-140K years ago; significant growth with average brain volumes ranging from 600-1,100cc.
- Neanderthals: 400-40K years ago brains were slightly larger than modern humans: ranging from 1,200-1,750cc.
- Homo sapiens: emerging 300K years ago exhibiting brain sizes from 1,200-1,600cc.
Other Factors Contributing to Brain Size Increases
- Dietary Changes – Increased consumption of meat and the advent of cooking with fire provided ease of digestion and unlocked higher caloric availability.
- Social Complexity – Evolving social structures and cooperation increased the need for more complex communication and language.
- Tool Use & Technology – Use and development of tools required and promoted greater problem solving and coordination.
- Climate Variability – Adapting to varying climates and changing environments was certainly one driver for enhanced cognitive flexibility and innovation.
It is also worth noting that despite amazing benefits and lacking dangers of consumption, regulatory institutions have decreed authoritarian ruling that psychedelic mushrooms are classified as schedule 1 substances; indicating high potential for abuse with no accepted medicinal use or potential healing properties. In other words, you will be caged or fined for holding, obtaining, or consuming these natural medicines. Conspiracies of sorts will explain motive and the fact that the same institutions allow modern processed foods (poison) to be cheap and encouraged for consumption should alert anyone to highly suspect intentions that are not in the best interests of function or progress of humans.
~No man or elected leadership should ever have the power of restricting nutrition grown in nature. Act Autonomously.
