The Stoned Ape Hypothesis: Did Magic Mushrooms Influence Human Evolution?
Psychedelic research has experienced a renaissance in recent years, but as we reconsider psilocybin's potential to treat addiction and psychiatric disturbance, where does that leave the stoned ape hypothesis? Did psychedelics stimulate human consciousness?
First proposed by 20th century ethnobotanist Terence McKenna (1946-2000) in his 1992 book "Food of the Gods," the basic concept is that the consumption of psychedelic fungi may have played a crucial role in the development of human mind and culture.
According to the author's younger brother, Dennis McKenna, the idea emerged out of conversations between the two. Dennis is himself an ethnopharmacologist and research pharmacognosist, as well as founder of the McKenna Academy of Natural Philosophy.
"For a while I had the idea to write a book that would have been called 'Hallucinogens and Evolution,' but never got around to it," Dennis says via email. "While Terence's approach is different from what I would have written, there are complementarities. Terence's ideas were certainly fertilized by those conversations."
