Stoned Ape Theory

Did magic mushrooms play a part in human evolution? Did the consumption of visionary plants facilitate the development of language, art, culture, and religion?

This is the theory proposed by the late Terrence McKenna.

McKenna, an ethnobotanist, philosopher, and psychonaut, first proposed the Stoned Ape hypothesis in his book Food of the Gods. According to McKenna, the desertification of Africa forced homo erectus, our distant ancestor, out of the dwindling tropical canopy in search of food. Following herds of wild cattle in hopes that they would lead to greener pastures, homo erectus noticed mushrooms growing out of the dung heaps and started consuming them.

These were psilocybin mushrooms, better known nowadays as magic mushrooms.

The Stoned Ape Theory could help explain the sudden and rapid growth of the human brain which took place between 2 million and 700,000 years ago. Since the emergence of the homo genus, the brain increased in size from 400 cubic centimetres to nearly 1400.

Rapid development of this kind is problematic to the evolutionary biologist. Nearly all evidence in support of evolution points to a long, grinding process that takes hundreds of millions of years so whenever biologists come across signs of sudden change--like the Cambrian Explosion or the growth of the human brain--they have to come up with plausible explanations.

There are currently two popular explanations for the rapid expansion of the human brain.

The first has to do with our move from quadruped to bipedal animal. With their hands liberated, the theory goes, our early ancestors would've started using tools with more frequency, increasing motor skills and triggering rapid neurological development to account for a variety of new motions and actions.

The second explanation is that we started eating substantially more meat. Meat contains protein which in turn could have fuelled rapid brain-growth.

I think both explanations are plausible. They also compliment each other. As we got better at making and using tools, we eventually started making spears, bows, and arrows. These tools made us better hunters and better hunters catch more prey. 

Rather than disprove the above, the Stoned Ape theory further compliments it. According to McKenna, low doses of psilocybin would've improved visual acuity in our ancestors, making them even better hunters. At higher doses the mushrooms would've increased sexual arousal, leading to more sex, higher birth-rates, and greater genetic diversity.

In other words, McKenna suggested that psilocybin might've provided our ancestors with an evolutionary advantage. He also believed magic mushrooms would have aided the development of symbolism, language, art, and shamanistic religions and here McKenna has recently found support from the scientific community. More on that later. 

The thing I like about the Stoned Ape theory is that it not only attempts to explain how our brains suddenly ballooned and how language and symbolism emerged, it also compliments the mainstream explanations I described above. It doesn't disprove the idea that advanced motor skills and greater consumption of meat were contributed to the brain's growth. It adds another layer to those explanations.

Um, what?

Needless to say McKenna's idea was not well-received by the scientific community. The Stoned Ape theory was largely ignored or treated as pseudoscience, as is often the case when radical new ideas are proposed. Luckily McKenna is no longer alone in supporting the Stoned Ape theory. There is legitimate research pointing to psychedelics as the inspiration for the prehistoric cave-paintings found across Europe, many of which dating as far back as 40,000 years ago. Here's a tidbit from the article linked above:

Prehistoric cave paintings across the continents have similar geometric patterns not because early humans were learning to draw like Paleolithic pre-schoolers, but because they were high on drugs, and their brains—like ours—have a biological predisposition to "see" certain patterns, especially during consciousness altering states.

The researchers compared geometrical patterns found in prehistoric cave-paintings to patterns drawn by people under the influence of psychedelics and, lo and behold! We have a match. This may not prove that homo erectus was a psychonaut but it does insinuate that visionary plants have been a part of our lives for a very long time, potentially influencing art, language, and primitive religions.

It's a line of questioning that's worth pursuing. If psychedelics played a part in human development, whether in the evolution of the brain itself or by helping our ancestors think symbolically, it would be worthwhile to study their effect on the brain and their potential value beyond recreational use.

Need a hand? Have a hundred!

Studies conducted in the 60's and 70's--the golden age of psychedelic research--pointed to LSD as a potential treatment for addiction to alcohol and hard drugs like heroin. After a brief hiatus, the study of psychedelics as medicine is finally making a comeback and the results are shocking. MDMA has proven effective for treating PTSD in veterans, ayahuasca and ibogaine for treating substance addiction and easing anxiety in terminally ill patients, and our old friend psilocybin for regenerating brain cells.

This might come as a shock to some but in light of the Stoned Ape hypothesis it actually makes sense. If psychedelics were pivotal in the development of the human mind, it stands to reason that they could be used to treat various disorders affecting the organ they helped to craft.

Either way it's an idea worth looking into!