We Don't Run Sh**

You’re sitting there with your phone, your clothes, your electricity, your little human civilization, probably feeling pretty good about the species. We build skyscrapers, launch rockets, create religions, and make manatees look incredibly unproductive by comparison. Naturally, we decided that means we rule the planet. But before you congratulate humanity for winning evolution, there is one wonderfully ridiculous question worth asking: what if the species claiming dominion over Earth owes who it became to something that grows out of shit?

If we, for a moment, remove ourselves from the “pyramid” hierarchy that is so common in the animal kingdom, with humans being at the top of the pyramid, and instead look at it more as a circle where humans are just one of many species on this planet, the question remains: what makes us so “different”? I mean, we don't have bonobos building rockets, even though we share a lot of similarities. (Fun fact: Bonobos form alliances, comfort each other, masturbate, and use sex to defuse conflict. Basically humans with less shame and no Love Island. Sorry, the reunion just happened, pretty messy.) I digress. But we don't have manatees becoming certified professional accountants. What we do have is a species that was once naked and afraid and is now clothed and warmed. What triggered this scientific breakthrough of prosperity? This question has puzzled scientists since the beginning of science.

Drugs! Well... Mushrooms

The Stoned Ape Theory says drugs! Well, drugs found in nature, specifically psilocybin mushrooms. These are known for causing hallucinations, out-of-body experiences, and what some would describe as a “godlike” awareness of their surroundings. In summary, it’s the idea that early human ancestors may have eaten psilocybin mushrooms and that repeated psychedelic experiences could have helped accelerate the development of human consciousness, language, creativity, and eventually culture. Terence McKenna popularized the idea. His basic argument was that as African forests receded, early hominins moved into grasslands and may have encountered psychedelic mushrooms growing in the dung of herd animals. (Dung = poop.) He proposed that different doses might have affected them differently: low doses sharpening visual perception, moderate doses increasing social and sexual bonding (bonobos type shit), and high doses producing mystical experiences: AKA seeing God, Cloud 9, or "Rolling" and not giving the experience up until the trip wears off (see what i did there). 

Now here we have a fun conversation that could potentially add fuel to the Stoned Ape Theory.

The Dinosaurs Die. The Mushrooms Show Up.

“A team of researchers led by the University of Utah and the Natural History Museum of Utah (NHMU) has completed the largest genomic diversity study for the genus Psilocybe. Their genomic analysis of 52 Psilocybe specimens includes 39 species that have never been sequenced. The authors found that Psilocybe arose much earlier than previously thought, about 65 million years ago, right around when the dinosaur-killing asteroid caused a mass extinction event. They established that psilocybin was first synthesized in mushrooms in the genus Psilocybe, with four to five possible horizontal gene transfers to other mushrooms from 40 up to 9 million years ago.”- Psychoactive psilocybin’s evolution in ‘magic mushrooms’ – @theU

So now we have Psilocybe showing up around the same geological moment the dinosaurs are getting absolutely evicted from Earth.

Let There Be Light

Now taking us back to the very beginning, and when I mean beginning I mean Genesis beginning, specifically Genesis 1:3: “And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.” The light is a response to the darkness that surrounded the Earth. This darkness potentially being the soot and blackness that came from the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs. Imagine that. Everywhere, darkness. Nothing lives except a few beautiful traces of a family of Psilocybe, and because of this they grow, they develop, they inhabit the Earth even further, and spread across the world.

Through this darkness, a light is developing, but this light responds to specific settings and must be consumed, and from there creates an internal light within the consumer whose body is able to properly connect with it. Now the stoned ape enters years later, able to survive, and consumes this fungi for survival. It triggers in it an awesome perspective never before seen or felt. This is shared, and slowly we start to “expand our minds, bro,” and become what we are today.

So Who Actually Runs This Sh**?

Now, of course, this is a fun thought experiment. This setting of the extinction of the dinosaurs from the asteroid creates a new age. The age of the dinosaurs stopped, then the age of fungi endured in the ruins. Then, incorporating the Stoned Ape Theory, it created an age in which humans became more than merely based on survival and became conscious beings of their own sentience.

So is there an argument that can be made as to why some of our best thoughts come while on the toilet? Adjacent to human dung? Would this era we’re in be considered the Age of Humans or the Age of Fungi? Do we display appreciation for those who could have potentially given us the path to create the comforts of the world we take for granted? Or do we stop relating to the world in a sense of a pyramid? If we continued that pyramid ideology, would we really be at the top, or does fungi have a genuine argument to be at the top? Maybe we need fungi more than it needs us. Doesn't that deserve a place on the pedestal?