Terence McKenna's "Stoned Ape" Theory of Human Evolution
"Perhaps the most intriguing of Terence McKenna's fascinating theories and observations is his explanation for the origin of the human mind and human culture.
To summarize: McKenna theorizes 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.
Among the new items in their diet were psilocybin-containing mushrooms growing in the dung of these ungulate herds. The changes caused by the introduction of this drug to the primate diet were many -- 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.
About 12,000 years ago, further climate changes removed the mushroom from the human diet, resulting in a new set of profound changes in our species as we reverted to pre-mushroomed and frankly brutal primate social structures that had been modified and/or repressed by frequent consumption of psilocybin.
McKenna's theory has great appeal and intuitive strength, but it is necessarily based on a great deal of supposition interpolating between the few fragmentary facts we know about hominid and early human history. In addition, because McKenna (who describes himself as "an explorer, not a scientist") is also a proponent of much wilder suppositions, such as his "Timewave Zero" theory, his more reasonable theories are usually disregarded by the very scientists whose informed criticism is crucial for their development.
This page links to resources that should help to fill in some of the gaps with data from the sciences and with other theories and myths about human origins."
"mckenna's theory has great appeal and intuitive strength"
ReplyDeletejust absolutely no data to support it.
retarded idea by a guy who sat around smoking too much herb
Well said Joe.
ReplyDeleteThis is precisely the kind of stuff - that by its proliferation and missionary evangelism - makes not just a subculture, but an entire subject territorially claimed as its own - look like a psycho-circus, of by and for a flakey communitarian fringe. Welcome to the zone - where 'minds so open the brains have to be falling out' is considered the standard of reason, meaning, and human intelligence.