Stoned ape theory

Uncommon card · No. 148333

The stoned ape theory is a controversial hypothesis first proposed by American ethnobotanist and mystic Terence McKenna in his 1992 book Food of the Gods. The theory holds that cognitive revolution was caused by the addition of psilocybin mushrooms, specifically the mushroom Psilocybe cubensis, into the human diet around 100,000 years ago. Using evidence based primarily on studies by Roland L. Fischer et al. from the 1960s and 1970s, he attributed much of the mental strides made by humans during the cognitive revolution to the effects of psilocybin intake found by Fischer. McKenna's argument has largely been ignored by the scientific community, who cite numerous alleged discrepancies, as well as a general lack of scientific evidence within his theory, and claim that his conclusions were arrived at via a fundamental misunderstanding of Fischer's studies.

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