as an avowed nonist my distrust of accepted truths creates in me a natural fondness for a certain kinds of theoretical kookiness. the sensible side of my personality registers this affinity as a weakness and attacks incoming tin-foil milliners like a platoon of pissed off white blood cells, not allowing it take strong position behind the fortifications of belief. (yeah it’s a mixed metaphor, so what?) my creative side on the other hand revels in kookiness, rolls in it, breathes it deeply, and smiles. the singularity, transhumanism, crypto-zoology, hell string theory! all are interesting and good fun. taken as speculative fiction this stuff is very effective at firing the imagination. one practitioner of this pleasurable cerebration was psychonaut, hash smuggler, butterfly collector, and lovable kook-extraordinaire terrance mckenna.
mckenna was a well-spring of exploratory thought, which might be expected from an avid user of mushrooms and dmt. some connections listed at random: novelty theory and timewave zero, dominator culture, machine elves, the voynich manuscript, eschatology, the archaic revival, gaianism, etc.
one of my favorite of his ideas to mill about is the stoned-ape theory of evolution which is poetic somehow and, for anyone who has taken heavy hallucinogens, even a bit intuitive.
wikipedia has this to offer on the subject:
Perhaps the most intriguing of Terence McKenna’s fascinating theories and observations is his explanation for the origin of the human mind and culture.
To summarize: McKenna theorizes that as the North African jungles receded toward the end of the most recent ice age, giving way to grasslands, a branch of our tree-dwelling primate ancestors left the branches and took up a life out in the open — following around herds of ungulates, nibbling what they could along the way.
Among the new items in their diet were psilocybin-containing mushrooms growing in the dung of these ungulate herds. The changes caused by the introduction of this drug to the primate diet were many — McKenna theorizes, for instance, that synesthesia (the blurring of boundaries between the senses) caused by psilocybin led to the development of spoken language: the ability to form pictures in another person’s mind through the use of vocal sounds.
About 12,000 years ago, further climate changes removed the mushroom from the human diet, resulting in a new set of profound changes in our species as we reverted to pre-mushroomed and frankly brutal primate social structures that had been modified and/or repressed by frequent consumption of psilocybin.
McKenna’s theory has great appeal and intuitive strength, but it is necessarily based on a great deal of supposition interpolating between the few fragmentary facts we know about hominid and early human history. In addition, because McKenna (who describes himself as “an explorer, not a scientist”) is also a proponent of much wilder suppositions, such as his “Timewave Zero” theory, his more reasonable theories are usually disregarded by the very scientists whose informed criticism is crucial for their development.
(you can check this link for some explanation of the idea in his own words.)
the theory assumes small doses and does not presuppose actually “tripping” but you have to assume there were some “accidents.” if you’ve never taken acid or mushrooms or peyote or dmt or smoked some heavily laced herbs it may be difficult for you but imagine for a minute our early primate ancestors eating a few too many magic mushrooms… yikes. quite a scene develops in my brain. both amusing and fascinating.
all in the idea is way overstated attributing community values, altruism, language, long-term planning and awareness of cause and effect to an interruption of male dominated hierarchies thanks to psilocybin. speculation as to the effect of psychedelics on the minds of our ancestors, however, is a pretty fascinating topic.
anyhow, rather than trying to outline any of his other ideas (i am “an explorer, not a biographer”) i’ll simply pass on some links so the interested can dig in as they see fit.
the most massive accumulation of relevant material seems to be terrence mckenna land
many relevant mp3’s can be found here
a mckenna bio from rotten.com
collected works by and about terrence mckenna.
lastly a ton of information related to, though not mckenna specific, stoned-ape theory (i.e. primate behavior, panspermia, ethnomycology, “prehistoric matriarchy” theories, the origins of language, synesthesia, etc) can be found here.