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THE "STONED APE" THEORY Around 3 million years ago, the brain size of our ancestors began to grow to the point where it was almost 4 times as large (from about 350 grams to more than 1,300 grams) by the time homo sapiens emerged around 200,000 years ago. What could have led to this expansion of brain mass? Terence McKenna had an idea. "In 1992, ethnobotanist and psychedelics advocate Terence McKenna argued in the book Food of the Gods that what enabled Homo erectus to evolve into Homo sapiens was its encounter with magic mushrooms and psilocybin, the psychedelic compound within them, on that evolutionary journey. He called this the Stoned Ape Hypothesis.""McKenna posited that psilocybin caused the primitive brain’s information-processing capabilities to rapidly reorganize, which in turn kick-started the rapid evolution of cognition that led to the early art, language, and technology written in Homo sapiens’ archeological record. As early humans, he said we “ate our way to higher consciousness” by consuming these mushrooms, which, he hypothesized, grew out of animal manure. Psilocybin, he said, brought us “out of the animal mind and into the world of articulated speech and imagination.”"As human cultural evolution led to the domestication of wild cattle, humans began to spend a lot more time around cattle dung, McKenna explained. And, because psilocybin mushrooms commonly grow in cow droppings, “the human-mushroom interspecies codependency was enhanced and deepened. It was at this time that religious ritual, calendar making, and natural magic came into their own.” The Stoned Ape Theoryhttps://www.inverse.com/article/34186-stoned-ape-hypothesis #psychedelics #evolution #terencemckenna #stonedapetheory