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InvisibleCorporal Kielbasa

Registered: 05/29/04
Posts: 17,235
Re: T. McKenna's Stoned Ape Theory [Re: Brewmaster]
    #6218533 - 10/27/06 05:03 PM (17 years, 5 months ago)

Mushrooms and Man
What's Related >>

By Paul Stamets, from Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms

Humanity's use of mushrooms extends back to Paleolithic times. Few peope-even anthropologists-comprehend how influential mushrooms have been in affecting the course of human evolution. Musrhooms have played pivotal roles in ancient Greece, India and Mesoamerica. Try to their beguiling nature, fungi have always elicited deep emotional responses: from adulation by those who understand them to outright fear by those who do not.

The historical record reveals that mushrooms have been used for less than beneign purposes. Claudius II and Pope Clement VII wer both killed by enemies who poisoned them with deadly Amanitas. Buddha died, according to legend, from a mushroom that grew underground. Buddha was given the mushroom by a peasant who believed it to be a delicacy. In ancient verse, that mushroom was linked to the phrase "pig's foot" but has never been identified. (Although truffles grow underground and pigs are used to find them, no deadly poisonous species are known.)

The oldest archeaological of mushroom use discovered so far is probably a Tassili image from a cave which dates back 3,500 years before the birth of Christ. The artist's intent is clear. Mushrooms with electrified auras are depicted outlining a dancing shaman. The spiritual interpretation of the image transcends time and is obvious. No wonder that word "bemushroomed" has evolved to reflect the devout mushroom lover's state of mind.

In the winter of 1991, hikers in the Italian Alps came across the well preserved remains of a man who died over 5,300 years ago, approximately 200 years later than the Tassili cave artist. Dubbed the "Iceman" by the news media, he was well equipped with a knapsack, flint axe, a string of dried Birch Polypores (Piptoporus betulinus) and another yet unidentified mushroom. The polypores can be used as tinder for starting fires and as medicine for treating wounds. Further, a rich tea with immuno-enhancing properties can be prepared by boiling these mushrooms. Equipped for traversing the wilderness, this intrepid adventurer had discovered the value of the noble polypores. Even today, this knowledge can be life-saving for anyone astray in the wilderness.

Fear of mushroom poisoning pervades every culture, sometimes reaching phobic extremes. The term mycophobic describes those individuals and cultures where fungi are looked upon with fear and loathing. Mycophobic cultures are epitomized by the English and Irish. In contrast, mycophilic societies can be found throughout Asia and eastern Europe, especially amongst Polish, Russian and Itialian peoples. These societies have enjoyed a long history of mushroom use, with as many as a hundred common names to decribe the mushroom varieties they loved.

The use of mushrooms by diverse cultures was intensively studied by an investment banker named R. Gordon Wasson. His studies concentrated on the use of mushrooms by Mesoamerican, Russian, English, and Indian cultures. With the French mycologist, Dr. Roger Heim, Wasson published research on Psilocybe mushrooms in Mesoamerica, and on Amanita mushrooms in Euro-Asia/Siberia. Wasson's studies spanned a lifetime marked by a passionate love for fungi. His publications include: Mushrooms, Russia, & History;The Wondrous Mushroom;Mycolatry in Mesoamerica;Maria Sabina and her Mazatec Mushroom Velada;and Persephone's Quest: Entheogens and the Origins of Religion. More than any other individual of the 20th century, Wasson kindled interest in ethnomycology to its present state of intense study. Wasson died on Christmas Day in 1986.

One of Wasson's most provocative findings can be found in Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality (1976) where he postulated that the mysterious SOMA in the Vedic literature, a red fruit leading to spontaneous enlightenment for those who ingested it, was actually a mushroom. The Vedic symbolism carefully disguised its true identity: Amanita muscaria, the hallucinogenic Fly Agaric. Many cultures portray Amanita muscaria as the archetypal mushroom. Although some Vedic scholars disagree with his interpretation, Wasson's exhaustive research still stands. (See Brough (1971) and Wasson (1972)).

Aristotle, Plato, and Sophocles all participated in religious ceremonies at Eleusis where an unusal temple honored Demeter, the Goddess of Earth. For over two milennia, thousands of pilgrims journeyed fourteen miles from Athens to Eleusis, paying the equivalent of a month's wage for the privilege of attendind the annual ceremony. The pilgrimgs were ritually harassed on their journed to the temple, apparently in good humor.

Upon arriving at the temple, the gathered in the initiation hall, a great telestrion. Inside the temple, pilgrims sat in rows that descended step=wise to a hidden, central chamger from which fungal concoction was served. An odd feature was an array of columns, beyond any apparent structural need, whose designed purpose escaped archaeologists. The pilgrims spend the night together and reportedly came away forever changed. In this pavilion crowded with pillars, ceremonies occurred, known by historians as the Eleusian Mysteris. No revelation of the ceremony's secrets could be mentioned under the punishment of imprisonment or death. These ceremonies continued until repressed in the early centuries of the Christian era.

In 1977, at a mushroom conference on the Olympic Peninsula, R. Gordon Wasson, Albert Hoffman, and Carl Ruck first postulated, that the Eleusinian mysteries centered on the use of psychoactive fungi. Their papers were later published in a book entitled The Road the Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries (1978). That Aristotle and other founders of western philosophy undertook such intellectual adventures, and that this secret ceremony persisted for neary 2,000 years, underscores the profound impact that fungal rites have had on the evolution of western conciousness.

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InvisibleCorporal Kielbasa

Registered: 05/29/04
Posts: 17,235
Re: T. McKenna's Stoned Ape Theory [Re: Corporal Kielbasa]
    #6218539 - 10/27/06 05:08 PM (17 years, 5 months ago)


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OfflineSilentG
Stranger thanfiction

Registered: 09/11/06
Posts: 420 420 Posts!
Last seen: 16 years, 4 months
Re: T. McKenna's Stoned Ape Theory [Re: Brewmaster]
    #6218543 - 10/27/06 05:10 PM (17 years, 5 months ago)

Quote:

Brewmaster said:
Another problem I have with the theory is that it suggests that mushrooms were available in all the different regions that we are finding humans to have developed in.

Also, as most of us know, there are plenty of wild shrooms that are poisonous, hundreds of which could easily be confused with psilocybe. I doubt that ancient man, possibly having seen another get sick or die from eating a mushroom, would be real quick to try eating the ones next to them. I find it hard to believe they could tell the difference, and if they could, they were probably out trying to find something to kill and eat anyways, rather than checking under woolly mammoth shit.


mmmmmmmm....mammoth shit...




I thought the majority of hominid brain development happened in Africa, which is the main area he stresses this theory applied to.

It's pretty miraculous that uncivilized man might discern which plants and fungi are beneficial and which are toxic, but you see it all over the South American rain forest (where biodiversity is incredible and toxic plants are everywhere) and in African holistic medicine as well. Peruvian shamans insist that the revelation of ayahuasca was divine and that it in turn revealed which plants were beneficial and harmful. I dunno about that, but it is pretty amazing that indigenous people's can know so much about pharmacology that modern science is just beginning to delve into.

As far as being too busy hunting, the whole point of one major contention is that ingesting *small* doses of shrooms would make them more productive hunters.

I think the big problem with the theory is it has several very plausible contentions, but there's no understood mechanism by which mushrooms could increase cognitive abilities in an inheritable way. It's a sound theory, but the conclusion isn't really valid without some sort of better explanation.

Personally, I like it though. The step from non-human animal cognition to human cognition is such an amazing one, that I think it'll take an equally amazing theory to explain it.


--------------------
Yes, I could go drive somewhere everytime the urge to defecate hits, but...where's the fun in that.
-Moth

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Offlinenightkrawler
explorer
Male

Registered: 06/18/04
Posts: 2,980
Loc: new england
Last seen: 5 years, 8 months
Re: T. McKenna's Stoned Ape Theory [Re: Brewmaster]
    #6219264 - 10/27/06 08:48 PM (17 years, 5 months ago)

mckennas theory is a cool idea. it can't be credited or discredited, no theories on consciousness can. you gotta take it for what it is. no one on this earth will ever know the truth.

Quote:

Brewmaster said:
Another problem I have with the theory is that it suggests that mushrooms were available in all the different regions that we are finding humans to have developed in.

Also, as most of us know, there are plenty of wild shrooms that are poisonous, hundreds of which could easily be confused with psilocybe. I doubt that ancient man, possibly having seen another get sick or die from eating a mushroom, would be real quick to try eating the ones next to them. I find it hard to believe they could tell the difference, and if they could, they were probably out trying to find something to kill and eat anyways, rather than checking under woolly mamoth shit.


mmmmmmmm....mamoth shit...




it's definitely possible that early humans had much more instinct than we have today. some animals just know which mushrooms will kill you and which ones wont. our instincts on such matters could have greatly de-evolved because we havent really used them over the past 1000s of years.

also, maybe no mushroom was toxic to early humans. our livers may have been able to handle them because generations upon generations had been eating them, and our livers got used to them. then maybe when we became more civilized our livers got weaker from not eating random poisonous mushrooms.

just because we've evolved in some ways, i'm sure we've de-evolved in many ways as well.


--------------------

Not all who wander are lost - J.R.R. Tolkien

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OfflineEllis Dee
Archangel
Male User Gallery

Registered: 06/29/01
Posts: 13,104
Loc: Fire in the sky
Last seen: 5 years, 14 days
Re: T. McKenna's Stoned Ape Theory [Re: Brewmaster]
    #6219383 - 10/27/06 09:35 PM (17 years, 5 months ago)

Quote:

Brewmaster said:
Recently, I've been having a heated discussion with a colleague of mine over Terrence McKenna's "Stoned Ape Theory" which suggests that the rapid developement of the human brain, the creation of language, and the reasoning behind our social structure as a species can all be attributed to the fact that some early primates ate psilocybin containing mushrooms and the primates who did not evolve, didn't.

I'm interested to know what you all think, I figured this was the best place to get completely biased answers.



I believe that theory is utter bunk. The evolution of species is a biological function that requires multiple generations of natural selection. Think about the implications of what you're suggesting. If I feed a gorilla some hallucinogen, then will is suddenly be able to take dictation from Jane Goodall, or even read a curious George book? Of course not.


--------------------
"If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do."-King Solomon

And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,

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Offlinekosmic_charlie
Truckin' in style
Male User Gallery

Registered: 03/18/01
Posts: 5,203
Loc: Deep Elem
Last seen: 2 months, 23 days
Re: T. McKenna's Stoned Ape Theory [Re: Brewmaster]
    #6219399 - 10/27/06 09:40 PM (17 years, 5 months ago)

What OMR said in his first post in this thread is my stance exactly. I loved True Hallucinations and The Archiac Revival. While the theories presented are incredibly thought-provoking, there is little no scientific evidence to back up such claims. But I still love reading his work and want to read his other books.


--------------------

Goin' where the water tastes like wine.

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