The stoned ape theory is not really susceptible to proof or disproof. The consumption of mushrooms by early hominids would be unlikely to leave any trace in the fossil record, because the mushrooms are soft tissue and can be eaten fresh, requiring no special tools or processing methods that might have survived. McKenna never really explains how the consumption of psychoactive mushrooms could have influenced biological evolution—that is, selected for changes at the level of the genome. It would have been easier for him to make an argument for psychoactive fungi’s influence on cultural
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