but why would we have needed something from another planet to achieve this? There are many other sources of psychedelics whose seeds definitely wouldnt have survived a space trip.

Have you heard of



?

He covered all of your questions and more, 24 years ago.

Unfortunately, the deep archaeological record is poor at providing conclusive evidence of psilocybin consumption...but yeah, out on the savannah, I'd have eaten one!

But while your stone age ancestor was sitting and smiling, he may have had some interesting ideas, like growing his own food and domesticating those gazelles so he didnt have to keep chasing them.

Also, in what way do art, music, and culture in general have in helping provide for our basic survival needs?

psilocybin enhances my 5 senses and gives me a competitive advantage over those who don't touch it. Do you think its possible that psilocybin mushrooms came from another planet and increased the size of the human brain?

Mushroom spores are practically custom built to survive in the environment of space. Assuming spores are capable of being pushed into outer space by electrostatic forces, a mushroom species could potentially colonize the habitable planets. Mushrooms are non-invasive, and occupy the very bottom of the food chain since they primarily survive on decomposing organic matter, their survivability among alien worlds is very high. psilocybin enhances my 5 senses and gives me a competitive advantage over those who don't touch it. Do you think its possible that psilocybin mushrooms came from another planet and increased the size of the human brain? I asked this question once in the chat room and didn't get much feedback haha. It just seems like we evolved so quickly compared to other animals and that there must have been something that caused this to happen.

Rather, I felt mostly like I wanted to sit and smile a lot.

Check out the forward linked here by Terence's brother Dennis which outlines how plant biochemistry in the ancestral diet can result in significant changes.

How exactly would eating mushrooms have altered the human genome in a way that would have done what TM claimed it did.

For years I’ve argued in lectures and writings that psychedelics, probably mushrooms, accidentally or deliberately ingested by early primates, triggered synesthetic experiences that formed the critical foundations of human language and cognition, the association of inherently meaningless sounds or images with inherently meaningful symbols and ideas. Spoken or written language is a synesthetic activity that takes place effortlessly and automatically in the process of understanding a language. In speaking, the vocal apparatus produces “small mouth noises,” small puffs or explosions of air that are inherently meaningless. But because we have learned the language, we all participate in the consensus that certain meaningless noises are associated with inner, visualized images or symbols that, as cognitive constructs, are imbued with meaning. These images and symbols, seen by the mind’s eye and associated with symbolic import, supply the “meaning” to various vocal expressions. In reading, the process is similar, except that a written symbol or word evokes an inner perception of the sound that is associated with the written word or symbol, and this, in turn, evokes an inner visualization of the meaningful symbol or word associated with that sound. Is this not also synesthesia?

What I’m suggesting, in effect, is that early on in the evolution of the human neural apparatus, the ingestion of psychedelics triggered the invention of language. I am not arguing here that psychedelics somehow affected our genes, at least not directly; rather, that they are teaching tools. Creating and using language is an acquired skill, dependent on an ability to discern meaning—significance—in images, sounds, and symbols. Psychedelics taught us how to do that; and, they are still teaching us! Once a small group or primates had acquired that skill, it could be easily taught to others, especially with the aid of the psychedelic teaching tools.

It is very much stressing credulity to believe that omnivores would not very quickly discover the psychoactives growing within their local bioregion.

You've all eaten psychedelics, based on your own experiences, can you really doubt they played a role in the development of art, music, language, religion, and self-reflection?

In "The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss" Dennis Mckenna discusses how the use of psychedelics could act as a catalyst to language formation which is likely the epigenetic factor at play in hominid evolution: