
Mushroom-munching poplar-popping Neandertals - diodorus
http://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/neandertals/diet/mushroom-neandertals-2017.html
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itchyjunk
This is interesting. Terrence McKenna[0] had some crazy theories about how we
evolved and one of the involved mushroom of the psilocybin [1] kind. The idea
was that these primarily grow on dung of herbivorous mammals. Since dung is
used to track the game when hunting, our ansistors might have come across it
and consumed it. It's been shown to improve visual perception in very low
dosage. He also suggests the cave paintings of half game/half animals to be a
byproduct of it. Of course, he had a nice theory but no way to prove it. But
stuff like this hints on that possibility. Although much recent, this cave
painting also suggests strong association with mushrooms. [2]

\----------------------

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_McKenna](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_McKenna)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybin)

[2] [http://erocx1.blogspot.com/2007/12/oldest-representations-
of...](http://erocx1.blogspot.com/2007/12/oldest-representations-of.html)

~~~
VLM
I had the same assumption that the article was going to be about psychedelic
mushrooms but the article had not a peep about that topic, solely mushrooms as
a macronutrient food.

Some mythology, some of which might even be scientific, is that below a
certain IQ, generally representing homo sapiens, neither (serious) fishing nor
mushroom gathering is possible or safe or sustainable but above a certain IQ
those two technologies are incredibly useful. I suppose a good analogy is
uranium is pretty useless until at least one culture reaches a certain
industrial threshold and then it becomes quite influential in technology and
geopolitics.

I wonder how smart neanderthals were, and how long they live if they eat
random mushrooms. At some point it becomes evolutionary cheaper to evolve a
smarter brain than to have stronger stomachs and livers.

Psilocybin must have been a very interesting experience for pre-historic
cultures.

~~~
Alex3917
> I wonder how smart neanderthals were, and how long they live if they eat
> random mushrooms.

A lot longer than if they were eating random plants. E.g. of the 2,000 or so
species of mushrooms in North America, there are maybe 10 or 20 that will kill
you. And almost all of those are in the same three or four genuses, so you
don't need to be able to identify a single poisonous mushroom to species to
avoid being poisoned. There are few more in Europe, but not that many more.

~~~
VLM
Its easy to survive a 1% death rate per meal, for one meal. That's a 99%
survival rate. But in the real world, you're starving, the kids are starving,
thats a mushroom, poisonous of course, but maybe if we split it 30 ways among
the entire tribe we'll all feel sick but each gain 10 calories...

The real problem with 99% survival rate per meal is there's about 1000 meals
per year assuming about three per day, and (0.99) __1000 is essentially zero
survival rate after a year. So just eating everything you 'll be dead in a
year. If you screw up the identification 1 time in 10, the survival rate drops
to only a third or so. If I did the math estimates right in my head, for only
10% mushroom fatality rate over 70 years you'd need four 9's reliability in
mushroom identification. To relegate the mushroom death rate to tribe-size-
mythological rarity would take six 9's of identification reliability. As a
smart homo sapiens I bet I could do it but sorting mushrooms into piles of
"yum" and "gonna kill ya" is definitely the kind of tribal role I'd give to
the tribe member furthest on the right side of the bell curve...

This is assuming a "white noise" distribution of toxic and non-toxic
mushrooms, and lots of spherical cows. But I think its still a sound
mathematical model that "tribes of dumb people" can't live off shrooms but
"tribes of smart people" have an acceptably dangerous source of calories at
hand, maybe enough to triumph in the long run.

Its very much like fishing. The odds of dying ice fishing once with the boy
scouts in 2010s is incredibly low. The odds of dying if you feed your entire
tribe all winter long for 70 years from ice fishing is disturbingly high
unless you're a really smart fisherman. Dumb people who ice fish will drown
and their tribe will starve, dumb people who don't ice fish will have their
tribe starve.

I find it fascinating to compare ice fishing and mushroom gathering to today's
attitudes toward nuclear power or car culture or aviation or chemical plants.
It seems that extremely high stakes gambling in the lifestyle of "do it right
near 100% of the time or everyone in the area dies horribly" is an incredibly
ancient urge for our species, its hardly industrial or post industrial, a
"savage" from 50Kyrs ago would totally understand our tempting fate with
nukes...

~~~
hutzlibu
"if we split it 30 ways among the entire tribe we'll all feel sick but each
gain 10 calories..."

Probably not as mushrooms are very low on calories ...

------
pvaldes
I have a simpler explanation.

You live in a wide cold and deforested steppe, have weapons with a limited
scope and hunt big mammals for living. Your prey lives in ever-watching herds,
can see you coming at day and can hear and sniff you at night, can easily
overrun you and keep a safe distance at all times, and there is not a lot of
places where you can hide and ambush them. Unless you can get closer without
being detected and place yourself at shooting range distance, neither you nor
your family will survive.

What a serious and committed hunter will do in this situation? They will use
dung to mask their scent and adopt the scent of the prey and hunt at dusk or
night. Even wolves do it. Dung could also have other uses, like recovering
some salts after a strenous journey running non-stop after your wounded prey,
and are used in many countries today as fuel source for cooking.

The presence of DNA from a mediocre edible mushrom in the mouth of a primitive
hunter is a proof of mushrom contact, but not a proof of deliberately mushrom
eating or recreational uses. The mushrom season is short and you could adquire
this DNA by other ways. When you literally bath yourself in whooly rhino poo
three or four times each month and process 'cow' skin with your teeth to make
leather, there are plenty of mushrom spores that will be inevitably
transferred from your hands to your mouth.

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innocentoldguy
This is an interesting article on many levels. For example, I think it is
interesting to see how technology continues to offer us new insights into old
scientific conclusions. It was also refreshing to read a scientific article
that addressed both sides of the debate with a fair amount of neutrality. To
me, this seems to be the wisest attitude to have when walking the path of
discovery.

A couple of other things:

1\. Is "neandertals" a misspelling of "neanderthals," or an accepted variant
of the word that I'm not familiar with?

2\. "Mushroom-munching" may not be the best phrase to have in a headline. At
first, I thought it was a metaphor for prehistoric fellatio. On second
thought, perhaps that was intentional. I mean, I read it.

~~~
mh-cx
The name of the German valley where the first specimen was found was spelled
Neanderthal until early 20th century. But it's Neandertal nowadays.

~~~
mc32
That's understandable, but here they are not talking about the geographic area
(in its native language, no less) but about the hominid species. English (and
other languages too) typically fossilize nouns. Take Japan, we don't now call
it Jahon even tough in the native language p -> h. [nevermind Japanese
interchangeably use Nihon and Nippon]

