Ever since Terence McKenna proposed in his book Food of the Gods1 that psychoactive plants might have played a role in human evolution, successive waves of criticism both positive and negative have continued in many forums and other online platforms. Joe Rogan, for example, has done two or three shows on the so-called "Stoned Ape Theory".
Typical of the dismissive, "scientific" criticism was the comment by Andrew Weil at the first Tucson conference on consciousness.2 Weil's view - made all the more authoritative by his expertise on psychoactive drugs, was that the theory was little more than "wild speculation". The substance of his comment was that experimentation with new foods, such as psychoactive plants, would not in normal circumstances have been a common occurrence, since any individual who developed a taste for frequent consciousness alteration using psychoactive plants would likely be seen as disruptive and deviant, and be shunned or expelled from the social group.
The problem for any such theory is of course the difficulty in presenting anything other than circumstantial evidence. Nevertheless, the possibility has certainly occurred to many who have had personal experience with psychedelic plants or preparations, and those familiar with the long tradition of shamanism and its nearly universal use of such substances. Shamanism and the use of psychoactives surely extends back in time to the prehistoric. As claimed by Donald E. Brown, the use of mood- or consciousness-altering techniques and/or substances is a Human Universal.3
And even a few of noted paleoanthropologists have suspected that a trigger event occurred in the early evolution of proto-man, that “advanced ape” whose physical characteristics — including his cerebral makeup — have been present and constant for two, or perhaps three hundred thousand years or more.
In the next few posts on this topic, I will attempt to provide a more comprehensive theory than has so far been the case. I hope to convince even some famous skeptics of the possible connection between the beginnings of human social evolution and the use of psychoactive plants.
Food of the Gods- The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge, 1993 by Bantam Books
Toward a Science of Consciousness, Hameroff, Kaszniak, and Scott, editors, The M.I.T. Press, 1996, p687
Brown, Donald E., 1991, Human Universals, Temple University Press, p.6
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