So I've kinda thought about this for awhile now. The idea came to me in a mushroom trip and it crosses my mind quite often when I'm high. Think about all of the time Earth has been around, approximately 4.55 Billion years according to science. Then, think about how long we've been in the evolutionary works, based on the discoveries of carbon-dated fossil remains, bones...etc, of our assumed ancestors. When you analyze the intelligence level and mind capacity of the earliest human ancestors and compare it to that of humans today, you can clearly see that our minds have expanded tremendously. Our brains have grown larger, and our mind capacity surpasses that of any other animal on our planet by such a tremendously large margin. While cavemen may have been more intelligent than others on Earth, it seems it was not by as large of a margin as we are today. Do you feel that there could be any way that naturally-occurring psychedelics (mushrooms, cacti...etc) may have played a part in the somewhat rapid (in the big picture) development and expansion in the mind of our species and eventual dominance over other species on the planet? It's not something that can really be tested in our present day and age is it? Assuming this hypothetical process took thousands of years, perhaps we would be unable to test it, but certainly it could be possible, right? I mean, obviously we've expanded our minds over the course of many years, and we know that psychedelics have the rare ability to expand our minds. It only requires that our ancestors have the ability and knowledge to eat, which obviously they did. Psychedelic plants were just as prevelant on the same planet they were inhabiting, which we inhabit today. They had no social blocks on psychedelic use for thousands of years, as we do today. It owns too much of a taboo in today's society, when we actually have advanced technology and the potential to research/comprehend them further. So what if there's more to it?...Psychedelics are a pretty amazing thing if you think about it and they are here naturally on our planet after all. What if some of our ancestors spent thousands of years eating them regularly in their diet. That would explain why there have been so many definitive branches of evolution in human ancestry, intelligence promotes survival. I'm sure they were widely available for many of our ancestors due to their location, but not so much for others. We have come a LONG way, and we don't yet FULLY understand how we have done so. So...I wanna know if anyone else thinks psychedelics could have acted as a catalyst to the development and expansion of the mind throughout human history. People often acknowledge the Mayans and other Central American civilizations as very intelligent people, far ahead of their time. Well, that is an area of the world where psychedelics plants and mushrooms are known to grow. Could there be any possible relation there? Just a couple random thoughts and theories, maybe I'm just crazy (or too high...any thoughts though?
Im reading this book called the Cosmic Serpent, its a pretty far out book but he kind of wonders the same thing as you do. Im not done with it but right now hes drawing all these conclusions as to how shamans figure out the medicinal properties of plants in the jungle through their ayahuasca visions. But yes, psychedelics I think are where this whole god idea came from.
Yeah man, it's at least worth some thought. I'll have to check that book out and yeah I totally agree about the god thing, it's as possible as anything else if you look at it from their perspective I think.
