Shroomin’ On The Savannah

Shroomin’ on the Savannah
An examination of the “Stoned Ape Theory”: The connection between evolutionary hominid brain growth and the pharmabotanical compound psilocybin.

What would be the consequences for evolutionary theory of admitting that some chemical habits confer adaptive advantage and thereby become deeply scripted in the behavior and even genome of some individuals?
TerenceMcKenna, Food of the Gods (1992)
Preamble & Introduction

With the fragmentary nature of the fossil record all research and proposed discoveries lead to an outcome that is unmistakably speculation and can only be labeled as theory based on educated guesses at best. Without actually being there we cannot bare assurance, only probability. In the human animal’s great endeavor to understand theirmissing past, whether for the good of the future, or to provide the peace of mind that comes with better comprehension or to even support prejudices, the search continues to this day.
The prehistoric record has been awash with speculation, some solidly based in the physical sciences to comprehend our being, others to solidify discriminatory preconceived notions between groups. This paper willlook at the untraditionally academic speculation proposed by philosopher and writer of shamanism and paleopharmacology Terence McKenna, which states that naturally occurring psychoactive substances present in the early hominid’s diet must have influenced the rapid evolution of the brain. Further leading to the evolution of consciousness/self awareness and language; the Rosetta Stone or Missing Linkof human evolution.

People have attempted – unsuccessfully – to answer the question of how our minds and consciousness evolved from the ape. They've tried all kinds of things to account for this evolution, but to my mind, the key unlocking this great mystery is the presence of psychoactive plants in the diet of early man.
Terence McKenna, Interview with Omni Magazine (Emphasis his own)The Big Picture
This story begins with a hominid that appears to have roamed eastern Africa as early as 2.5 m.y.a. Under the suggestion of Louis Leakey and his colleagues, this hominid, with a larger cranial capacity than the robust australopithecines, required a new genus, Homo, and became known as Homo habilis; although some still consider them to be of the Australopithecus. Regardless of thetaxonomic term it is the 20% increase in cranial size of which to note. It is proposed that these ‘Handy Men’ may have gotten their curious hands on some psychoactive fungi, Stropharia cubensis, which may have been present in the dung of grazing bovine ancestors.
As bipedal hominids became more terrestrial with greater and greater fragmentation of the retreating forests they would havejourneyed across savannah in search of food, probably following non-threatening grazing animals, which offered protection from predators, like the big cats or hyenas. McKenna stipulates that while being opportunistic hunters and fulltime gatherers the inevitable interaction with the dung of the Bos indicus (or another earlier species of ungulate Bos) and the Stropharia cubensis psilocybin containingmushrooms that only grow in such droppings. The ungulate is thought to have been roaming the planet since the Late Cretaceous and when bipedal primates began passing between fragmented forests across savannahs their contact is highly probable. Two million years may have been spent sharing terrain and resources, and hallucinogenic mushrooms were probably one of these resources due to itsadvantageous qualities. He sites Non Nak Tha, in Thailand dated to 15,000 B.P. for linking the bovine with human evolution, although I was not able to find support to backup this data. The domestication of the bovine however does support the theory that early hominids and early Bos species were in close contact evolving beside each other and findings of ungulate bone fragments in Swartkrans, South Africa...