but in honesty it makes more sense to me than just gradual random change. this dude actually gave a specific reason and if you are familiar with this naturally occuring substance makes a good bit of sense….lmao if anything its a good laugh.
Perhaps the most famous of Terence McKenna’s theories and observations is his explanation for the origin of modern human consciousness and culture. McKenna theorized that as the North African jungles receded, near the end of the most recent ice age, giving way to savannas and grasslands, a branch of our tree-dwelling primate ancestors left the forest canopy and began to live in the open areas outside of the forest. There they experimented with new varieties of foods as they adapted, physically and mentally, to their new environment.
Among the new food items found in this new environment were psilocybin-containing mushrooms growing near the dung of ungulate herds that occupied the savannas and grasslands at that time. McKenna, referencing the research of Roland L. Fisher, Ph.D. (College of Optometry and Departments of Psychiatry and Pharmacology, College of Medicine, The Ohio State University)[14] [15] [16] [17], claimed that enhancement of visual acuity was an effect of psilocybin at low doses, and supposed that this would have conferred an adaptive advantage. He also argued that the effects of slightly larger doses, including sexual arousal (not reported as a typical effect in scientific studies[citation needed]) — and in still larger doses, ecstatic hallucinations and glossolalia — gave selective evolutionary advantages to members of those tribes who partook of it. There were many changes caused by the introduction of this psychoactive mushroom to the primate diet. McKenna hypothesizes, for instance, that synesthesia (the blurring of boundaries between the senses) caused by psilocybin led to the development of spoken language: the ability to form pictures in another person’s mind through the use of vocal sounds.
About 12,000 years ago, further climate changes removed psilocybin-containing mushrooms from the human diet. McKenna argued that this event resulted in a new set of profound changes in our species as we reverted to the previous brutal primate social structures that had been modified and/or repressed by frequent consumption of psilocybin.
McKenna did not attempt to defend his hypotheses through rigorous scientific evidence; he consciously self-identified as a type of shaman, or ethnobotanist. McKenna and his followers view his theories as speculation that is at a minimum scientifically feasible and arguably gifted by special knowledge due to psychedelic plants. His hypothesis that psilocybin induced a phase change in human evolution is necessarily based on a great deal of speculation that interpolates between the few fragmentary facts we know about hominid and early human development, but he argued that the ability to metabolize any dietary component could, in principle, confer a selective advantage. Many find this explanation implausible, as it suggests a Lamarckian interpretation of evolution wherein acquired secondary characteristics (e.g. an adaptave advantage resulting from consuming a hallucinogen) are assumed to be propagated genetically. However, McKenna also suggests that the cultural pattern of the mushroom-using primates is transformed through this process as well (great-horned-mushroom-goddess religion). In this light, it is arguable that culture and language would have been the medium of transference, rather than genetics. An article in New Scientist July 2008 now suggests Mckenna is closer to the mark than previously thought: "characteristics acquired during an individuals’ lifetime can be passed on to their offspring. Over the past decade it has become increasingly clear that environmental factors such as diet or stress, can have biological consequences that are transmitted to offspring without a single change to the gene sequences taking place.
One can counter-argue that the ability to metabolize any dietary component survives because those who had that ability survived – and the other did not. No Lamarckian interpretation required. No need to speak of transfer of acquired abilities through genetics.
The folks taking the Lamarckian path still need to understand that the alternative interpretation exists – that the ones who were genetically more (better?) adapted to the results of the environmental changes through genetic characteristics were the ones who survived. Thus passing along that characteristic to their offspring.
Interesting line of thought, though. Thanks for mentioning it.
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