Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures

by Merlin Sheldrake

Some time around 600 million years ago, green algae began to move out of shallow fresh waters and onto the land. These were the ancestors of all land plants. The evolution of plants transformed the planet and its atmosphere and was one of the pivotal transitions in the history of life – a profound breakthrough in biological possibility. Today, plants make up 80 per cent of the mass of all life on Earth and are the base of the food chains that support nearly all terrestrial organisms.1 Before plants, land was scorched and desolate. Conditions were extreme. Temperatures fluctuated wildly and landscapes were rocky and dusty. There was nothing that we would recognise as soil. Nutrients were locked up in solid rocks and minerals, and the climate was dry. This isn’t to say that land was completely devoid of life. Crusts made up of photosynthetic bacteria, extremophile algae and fungi were able to make a living in the open air. But the harsh conditions meant that life on Earth was overwhelmingly an aquatic event. Warm, shallow seas and lagoons teemed with algae and animals. Sea scorpions several metres long ranged the ocean floor. Trilobites ploughed silty seabeds using spade-like snouts. Solitary corals started to form reefs. Molluscs thrived.