Thanks for reading the Daily Concept. If you enjoyed this newsletter, forward it to a friend. If someone forwarded you this email, click here to subscribe.

Your faithful writer,
Dr. Daniel Smith

About two million years ago, our ancestors began to undergo a major evolutionary development.

It was around this time that the human brain began to grow, ultimately tripling in size by the time that Homo sapiens came on the scene around 200,000 years ago.

This “brain boom” is well-documented in the fossil record, but scientists have struggled to explain why our craniums kept growing during this period.

One of the more interesting ideas explaining this development is called the “stoned ape theory.”

Basically, this theory claims that early hominids experienced brain growth because they were eating psychedelic plants and mushrooms.

What is the Stoned Ape Theory?

Stoned Ape Theory is the hypothesis that psychedelic plants like psilocybin (more commonly known as magic mushrooms) played a key part in the development of early humans.

The main version of the theory was introduced by psychedelics expert and ethnobotanist Terence McKenna in his 1992 book Food of the Gods.

It’s worth noting that McKenna did not come up with or use the Stoned Ape theory term and that it represents a simplification of his broader arguments in the book.

McKenna’s hypothesis is simple: consuming naturally-occurring hallucinogenic plants and mushrooms provided an evolutionary advantage to the human race by promoting cognitive behaviors and traits that enabled brain development.

Specifically, McKenna argued that the use of psychedelics by early humans helped to enable the emergence of language.

It was our use of language that truly distinguished early humans from their ancestors, enabling the emergence of more sophisticated social structures that formed the basis of human society and civilization.

Another version of the stoned ape theory contends that psychedelic drugs played an important part in the formation of the early religions among pre-historic humans.

According to this theory, religion’s emergence was closely linked to (ritual) psychedelic use. Here’s an example of how that theory might have worked in practice:

Brain Growth and Creativity

Professor Thomas Falk of the University of Dayton said that the stone ape theory offers one explanation for a “creative explosion” in human behavior that occurred around 40,000 years ago:

Another study, entitled Psychedelics, Sociality, and Human Evolution, argued that the use of psychedelics by early humans may have encouraged pro-social behaviors that strengthened ties between individuals and played a role in the emergence of early human institutions like religion.

Here’s a chart from their paper that maps out their argument in more detail:

Drugs and Civilization

Although this theory is interesting, it is not taken seriously by most scientists who speculate on these questions of early human evolution.

Personally, it’s hard to imagine that the consumption of psychedelic mushrooms was so common across early human tribes that it actually contributed to the ways that our brains evolved.

These changes take place across millions of years and hundreds of generations. According to the scientific consensus, it’s far more likely that the invention of cooked food (which was easier on our digestive system than raw food, allowing our bodies to divert more energy to brain function than ever before) was responsible for the growth in early human brains millions of years ago.

However, I do find the idea that psychedelics played a role in the creation of religion to be convincing.

Archaeological evidence makes it clear that early humans consumed psychedelic substances.

Last year, researchers analyzed hair found in a 3,000-year-old Spanish burial site. They found that the hair tested positive for two hallucinogenic substances (atropine and scopolamine), in addition to the stimulant ephedrine.

One of the researchers who studied the site in Spain speculated that the drug-addled caveman was a shaman who played a unique social role in early human society, acting as an “intermediary” between the real world and the spiritual world.

It makes sense; a prophet who formed a new religious myth could have just been telling his buddies about what he saw when he was tripping balls. (see the Art of the Day below)

ART OF THE DAY

Thank you for reading. Please reply to this email if you have any thoughts or feedback.

Yours,
Dan