Intoxication and Evolution? Addressing and Assessing the “Stoned Ape” or “Drunken Monkey” Theories as Catalysts in Human Evolution

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Intoxication and Evolution?

Addressing and Assessing the “Stoned Ape” or “Drunken Monkey”

Theories as Catalysts in Human Evolution

“Chimpanzees in west Africa observed indulging in habitual drinking. Inhabitants of forests in Bossou, south-eastern Guinea, enjoy rich, alcoholic brew fermented from sugary sap. The boozing starts from 7am. Though large amounts are often drunk, the sessions are orderly, even sociable. A skinful later, and always before nightfall, enough is enough and they rest. They are the chimpanzees of Bossou, south-eastern Guinea, and their secret is finally out. With 17 years of evidence in hand, scientists have declared the troop the first wild chimpanzees to indulge in regular, habitual drinking. The west African chimps were observed in their natural forest habitat from 1995 to 2012. Scientists report 51 incidents of the chimps raiding the palm sap containers. The apes found a big leaf – often one covering the container – and chewed it to form an absorbent sponge or a folded scoop. They then plunged this into the sap, pulled it out and drank.” ref  

“One male, named Foaf, was a regular, appearing in 14 of the 51 sessions. He was an outlier though. Of the 26 apes observed, 13 were apparently teetotal. Separate tests on raffia palm sap found that the alcohol content of the drink varied through the day, as the sugars increasing fermented to alcohol. On average, the liquid contained 3.1% alcohol by volume (ABV), the same as a pint of Bass mild. The most potent sap came in at 6.9% ABV, the same as Brooklyn East India Pale Ale. Male and female chimps were equally keen on the drink, but apes varied individually in how much the imbibed. At one event, the scientists estimate that the amount of alcohol ingested reached 85 milliliters, the equivalent of about three pints of Stella Artois.” ref 

“The all-too-human behavior adds weight to the “drunken monkey hypothesis”, which states that natural selection favored primates with a taste for alcohol because it stimulated the appetite, helped them hunt for fruit and so boosted calorific intake. About 10 million years ago, our ancestors – and those of apes – gained a genetic mutation that improved 40-fold our ability to break down ethanol. Without it, consuming large amounts would be even more dangerous.” ref

Drunken Monkey Hypothesis 

“The drunken monkey hypothesis proposes that human attraction to ethanol may derive from the dependence of the primate ancestors of Homo sapiens on ripe and fermenting fruit as a dominant food source. Ethanol naturally occurs in ripe and overripe fruit when yeasts ferment sugars, and consequently, early primates (and many other fruit-eating animals) have evolved a genetically based behavioral attraction to the molecule.” ref

Drunken Monkey theory Has Support and Faces Criticism on a Couple of Grounds

“One, primates prefer ripe fruits over rotting and the alcohol content of ripe fruits is so poor, it is not enough to get them “drunk”. Two, if they do get drunk, balancing on trees under the influence of alcohol would be risky, particularly for babies. A third argument was that high-alcohol, low-sugar fruits should deter, rather than attract, primates. Added to that is the fact that primates had rarely been seen getting wasted on fermented fruits in the wild. But these criticisms did not really get to the heart of  “the drunken monkey hypothesis” idea. Its main argument is that our ability to digest alcohol is well-developed today because exposure to alcohol happened early on in our ancestry.” ref 

“Evidence of this can be seen in our genetic make-up enzyme named ADH4, which is one of many that break down alcohol in our bodies. Because it is present in the mouth, food pipe and stomach, ADH4 is the first such enzyme to face off with the alcohol we consume. And a genetic mutation in our evolutionary past made ADH4 40 times better at breaking down ethanol. The mutation was effectively ubiquitous in our ancestors by 10 million years ago, which might be significant. This is around the time that those ancestors started adapting to a terrestrial lifestyle and probably first encountered high ethanol content in fruits rotting on the forest floor. This point in prehistory also coincided with a period of climate change that saw forests in Africa shrink while grasslands expanded. In the new environments, fresh fruit would have been harder to come by.” ref 

“Fallen, over-ripe fruit often lies uneaten for longer than the sought-after fresh and hanging ripe fruit, so it contains more ethanol. As the shift to a terrestrial life was underway, digesting ethanol quickly would have been life-saving for our ancestors, who were still spending half of their time climbing and swinging in trees some 10 to 20m above ground. So, an ADH4 that could better utilize alcohol-rich fruits would have been favored in our evolution. Additionally, the calories in alcohol would have likely provided the extra energy required by our ape ancestors to move on the ground when their bodies were still adapted to living in trees.” ref 

“The mutation in ADH4 also means that the enzyme in our more ancient, arboreal ancestors about 40 million years ago was bad at digesting ethanol – “stinking bad”, as Carrigan puts it. This raises the question that, if ADH4’s ability to deal with ethanol was dramatically improved 10 million years ago, what was it doing in the first place? “ADH4 in our very distant ancestors 40 million years ago was very good at metabolizing a different kind of alcohol called geraniol,” says Carrigan. “And it turns out geraniol is not the only alcohol that the ancient ADH4 was good at metabolizing. It also metabolized cinnamyl, coniferyl, and anisyl alcohols. These alcohols have similar structures, are large hydrophobic alcohols, and as the name implies are found in geranium, cinnamon, conifer and anise plants.” ref 

“These alcohols can be harmful if consumed in high concentrations and are produced by plants to deter animals from eating their leaves. “This makes sense because our arboreal ancestors 40 million years ago were eating leaves (and fruits). So being able to metabolize the chemicals in leaves would have been a really big advantage.” The exposure to ethanol would have been minimal for these ancestors as they had access to unfermented fruits, he adds. “This makes sense because our arboreal ancestors 40 million years ago were eating leaves (and fruits). So being able to metabolize the chemicals in leaves would have been a really big advantage,” says Carrigan. The exposure to ethanol would have been minimal for these ancestors as they had access to unfermented fruits.” ref 

“Millions of years later, when ADH4 encountered ethanol in high concentrations in fermenting fruit, it adapted to digesting it really well. “It went from an enzyme that metabolized ethanol incredibly slow to one that metabolized ethanol 40-fold more efficiently,” says Carrigan. This was due to a single tweak in the enzyme. This change in ADH4 that occurred 10 million years ago enabled the last common ancestor of humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas to break down ethanol. This finding certainly seems to back a key part of  “the drunken monkey hypothesis” that our alcoholic tendencies stem from our fruit-eating ancestors. It also shakes the idea that humanity’s tryst with alcohol is fairly recent, dating with beer seeming to be between 11,700 and 13,700 years old. And 9,000 years, to when humans first produced alcoholic beverages from grain, honey and fruit.” ref 

“The world’s oldest brewery was found in a prehistoric burial site in a cave near Haifa in Israel. Researchers have found the residue of 13,000-year-old beer that they think might have been used for ritual feasts to honor the dead. The traces of wheat-and-barley-based alcohol were found in stone mortars carved into the cave floor. Or as early as around 9,000 years ago, chemical analysis of jars from the Neolithic village Jiahu in the Henan province of northern China revealed traces of a mixed fermented beverage made of grapes, hawthorn berries, honey, and rice. Moreover, the earliest firm evidence of wine production dates back to around 8,000 years ago in Georgia part of the Caucasus region of Eurasia.  Evidence of alcoholic beverages has also been found dating from 7,400-7,000 years ago in Hajji Firuz Tepe in Iran, around 5,150 years ago in ancient Egypt, 5,000 years ago in Babylon, 4,000 years ago in pre-Hispanic Mexico and 1500 BC in Sudan.” ref  

“Moreover, even seeming support there is also needed doubt as wild chimpanzees booze on fermenting tree sap talked about above is rare behavior. It was seen only in 50% of the local Bossou chimp population. The 13 remaining chimps were teetotallers, even though palm wine was available year-round. Not to mention that the chimpanzees cannot tap the raffia palm on their own: they rely on the sap collection set-up prepared by villagers. And the research did not put “the drunken monkey hypothesis”  ideas to the test. Whether the chimps use their sense of smell to home in on the wine or gain any nutritional benefit from drinking it, it does not show. But it does confirm that wild chimpanzees are not averse to alcohol.” ref 

“Chimpanzees, like humans, have an efficient form of the ADH4 enzyme to metabolize alcohol, though it varies across populations. This is because we both inherited the modified gene coding for a faster version of the enzyme from a common ancestor. But there is one distant primate that acquired the same ADH4 mutation, independent of the lineage that led to us.  Aye-ayes split from our branch of the primate evolutionary tree 70 million years ago. We do not know when they acquired the same ADH4 mutation as us. But the fact that modern aye-ayes have it hints to a past where these animals too were exposed to alcohol. If this was indeed the case, then aye-ayes might consume alcohol in the wild even today.” ref 

“Indirect proof suggests they might. One study confirmed that two aye-ayes in captivity do have a taste for alcohol. Aye-ayes are small, rather weird-looking primates with a thin and unusually long middle finger, which they use to locate and catch grubs in dead wood. But during the rainy season, aye-ayes spend about 20% of their feeding time drinking the nectar of the traveller’s palm. Their long middle finger helps here too, in searching and scooping out the nectar.” ref 

“It is believed that the nectar contained in bracts and flowers of the traveler’s palm ferments. Though its alcohol content is yet to be established, the nectar is similar to that of another palm: the bertam palm. Bertam nectar contains up to 3.8% alcohol on natural fermentation by yeast. It gives out a strong whiff and is drunk by pen-tailed treeshrews, common treeshrews, and slow lorises, among other mammals. Aye-ayes a choice of liquid foods made of sugar water and varying concentrations of alcohol (0 to 5%). The two captive aye-ayes could differentiate between different alcoholic foods. They preferred to drink from the containers with higher alcohol doses of 3 and 5% over those with 1% and zero alcohol.” ref 

“When the containers holding higher alcohol contents had run out, the aye-ayes continued to compulsively dip and lick their fingers. “This suggests that they really like those concentrations. But the animals did not show any obvious signs of inebriation, which goes back to their ability to breakdown alcohol because of a super-efficient ADH4 enzyme.  “Natural selection would favor this special ability because it allows these animals to access calories that would normally be toxic to other animals. Those organisms would avoid alcohol because it can impair judgment and is a chemical toxin.” ref 

“Unlike aye-ayes, chimps, and humans, other animals that consume ethanol do not necessarily have an ethanol-active version of ADH4. Take the common treeshrews that drink from the bertam palm, for instance. Their alcohol intake is considered potentially risky. How do they cut it? We do not know for sure. Whatever allows these animals to tolerate the effects of alcohol, it is sobering to know that we are not the only habitual drinkers out there.” ref 

Animal Intoxication Yes and No?

“Animals usually don’t get drunk in the wild, however, because the concentrations of alcohol within fruit are fairly low.  Even though our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees, eat ripe fruit as more than 90 percent of their diet, their stomachs fill up before they consume enough alcohol to get drunk.” ref 

“The drunken monkey hypothesis proposes that our attraction to booze derives from a powerful sensory bias associating alcohol with nutritional reward. Primates evolved as fruit eaters in tropical rainforests, where yeasts abound and where fermentation is fast because of the warm and moist climate. Ripe fruit can be hard to find, but the smell of alcohol will lead you to the source. And once there, alcohol can stimulate feeding, just as it does in modern humans via the aperitif effect. It’s best to eat up these resources quickly before others get there.” ref  

“So the psychoactive effects of alcohol, as contained within sugar-rich fruit pulp, may have evolved to let hungry primates more efficiently find and consume scarce calories in the forest.  This is part of our ancestral sensory and behavioral baggage that is retained into modern times. We even obtain health benefits from low-level alcohol consumption relative to either abstention or high levels of drinking. Similar effects pertain to fruit flies, suggesting genetically based adaptation to alcohol in the diet. The molecular pathways underlying inebriation are also similar between us and flies.” ref 

“Things can go badly wrong, however, when we have access to large amounts of cheap, high-concentration booze. There is a mismatch between what our great ape ancestors ate, and what we can create today via agriculture, controlled fermentation, and the relatively recent process of distillation to obtain strong spirits. By separating liquid alcohol from fermenting grains or fruits, we can obtain high levels of psychoactive reward while drinking that sometimes results in excessive consumption.” ref 

“Stoned Ape” Theory of Human Evolution

“Ethnobotanist and psychedelics advocate Terence McKenna argued in the book Food of the Gods that what enabled Homo erectus to evolve into Homo sapiens was its encounter with magic mushrooms and psilocybin, the psychedelic compound within them, on that evolutionary journey. He called this the Stoned Ape Hypothesis.” ref 

“McKenna posited that psilocybin caused the primitive brain’s information-processing capabilities to rapidly reorganize, which in turn kick-started the rapid evolution of cognition that led to the early art, language, and technology written in Homo sapiens’ archeological record. As early humans, he said we “ate our way to higher consciousness” by consuming these mushrooms, which, he hypothesized, grew out of animal manure. Psilocybin, he said, brought us “out of the animal mind and into the world of articulated speech and imagination.” ref 

“As human cultural evolution led to the domestication of wild cattle, humans began to spend a lot more time around cattle dung, McKenna explained. And, because psilocybin mushrooms commonly grow in cow droppings, “the human-mushroom interspecies codependency was enhanced and deepened. It was at this time that religious ritual, calendar making, and natural magic came into their own, but this hypothesis was never seriously considered by the scientific community.” ref 

Archaeozoological and genetic data indicate that taurine cattle were first domesticated from local wild ox (aurochs) in the Near East some 10,500 years ago.  

“The earliest signs of wild aurochs domestication are seen at Dja’de, Syria in the Middle Euphrates Valley, dating to the Early Pre-Pottery Neolithic (EPPNB; 10,800–10,300 years ago and at Çayönü, Turkey in the High Tigris Valley, between the Early and Middle PPNB (around 10,200 years ago. After an initial breeding phase lasting some 1.5 millennia in an area between the Levant, central Anatolia/Turkey and western Iran, domestic cattle started to appear in western Anatolia/Turkey and southeastern Europe by 8,800 years ago, southern Italy by 8,500 years ago, and Central Europe by 8,000 years ago. Importantly, the two sites showing the earliest signs of wild aurochs domestication in Dja’de-el-Mughara (Northern Syria) and Çayönü (southeastern Anatolia/Turkey) are less than 155 miles apart. The closeness of these sites permitted a local exchange of wild/early domestic cattle management skills, and possibly the cattle themselves, and adds support to the hypothesis of a restricted origin of taurine cattle in the northern Levant. Interestingly, archaeological signs of sedentism during the ninth millennium BC are restricted to the same region.” ref  

“Damien, what are your thoughts on the “stoned ape hypothesis?” – Questioner 

My response, If you are talking about: “the belief that psilocybin mushrooms were the “evolutionary catalyst” from which language, projective imagination, the arts, religion, philosophy, science, and all of human culture” I do not buy it. 

“I think the ‘evolutionary catalyst’ is probably composed of hundreds of interconnected factors more than any single cause. I know it can be argued that fire and cooking probably did a great deal to change the brain to stomach ratio because of a large influx of carbohydrates. What factors stand out more in your mind?” – Questioner   

My response, To me, the ‘evolutionary catalyst’ was meat eating (Hunters or Scavengers) is a major part of the origin. “The diet of our earliest ancestors, who lived about six million years ago in Africa, was probably much like that of chimpanzees, our closest living primate cousins, who generally inhabit forest and wet savanna environments in equatorial Africa. Chimpanzees mainly eat fruit and other plant parts such as leaves, flowers, and bark, along with nuts and insects. Meat from the occasional animal forms only about 3 percent of the average chimpanzee’s diet. The diet of our earliest ancestors, who lived about six million years ago in Africa, was probably much like that of chimpanzees, our closest living primate cousins, who generally inhabit forest and wet savanna environments in equatorial Africa. Chimpanzees mainly eat fruit and other plant parts such as leaves, flowers, and bark, along with nuts and insects. Meat from the occasional animal forms only about 3 percent of the average chimpanzee’s diet.” ref 

“The fossil record offers evidence that meat-eating by humans differs from chimpanzees’ meat-eating in four crucial ways. First, even the earliest evidence of meat-eating indicates that early humans were consuming not only small animals but also animals many times larger than their own body size, such as elephants, rhinos, buffalo, and giraffes, whereas chimpanzees only hunt animals much smaller than themselves. Second, early humans generally used tools when they procured and processed meat. (Of course, meat-eating by human ancestors could have taken place before early humans developed the ability to procure meat by means of tools —but so far no one has determined whether the fossil record would show any evidence of it or what the evidence would look like.)” ref 

“Third, as we will see later, it’s likely that much of the first meat eaten by early humans came not from hunting but from scavenging; by contrast, observations of chimpanzees scavenging are extremely rare. Fourth, like humans today, our early ancestors didn’t always eat food as soon as they encountered it. Sometimes they brought it back to a central place or home base, presumably to share with members of their social group, including unrelated adults. This behavior, the delaying of food consumption, is not observed in chimpanzees, and it holds important implications for how these early humans interacted with one another socially.” ref  

“The site of Dikika, in Ethiopia, had yielded two bones, each with multiple cut marks, from sediments dated at 3.4 million years old. This evidence pushed back the date for the earliest human meat-eating by 800,000 years—earlier than the advent of genus Homo— thereby jeopardizing the idea that using stone tools to butcher and eat large animals was unique to our genus. These cut marks are the same age as the fossils of Australopithecus afarensis found in nearby deposits at Dikika. The game-changing conclusion of this evidence was that Homo had not been the only meat-eater among human ancestors; Australopithecus had also been capable of butchering and eating animals, if only on rare occasions. Additional support for this claim is seen in 149 stone tools dating back to 3.3 million years ago from the site of Lomekwi, Kenya.” ref 

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“Two parallel marks that look like cut marks on a 3.4-million-year-old bone from a buffalo-sized creature from Ethiopia in East Africa. Along with scores of crude stone tools discovered at Lomekwi 3 in Kenya are East Africa that date back 3.3 million years. And more interesting is Kenyanthropus a hominin genus identified from the Lomekwi site by Lake Turkana, Kenya, dated to 3.3 to 3.2 million years ago.” ref, ref, ref, ref, ref

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My response, Moreover, starch had an effect but it was later than meat. “Humans cooked and ate starchy plant roots to balance their diet 120,000 years ago.” ref 

“Yes, I’m reading your first article you published and realizing I didn’t include the thing I harp on about in everything… Time. I’m really enjoying the articles links and I think I agree with you entirely.” – Questioner   

My response, Thanks, here is my art of the evidence. Meat and fire are the major difference in human evolution. ref

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Fire at 1.5 Mya on the Site of FxJj20 AB, Koobi Fora, Kenya

The Evolution of Fire Sacralizing and/or Worship 1.5 million to 300,000 years ago and beyond?

Prehistoric remains in the Atapuerca region’s limestone caves preserved a million years of human evolution. Among these sites is the cave of Gran Dolina, where six hominin skeletons, dated between 780,000 and 1.2 million years ago, skeletons belonging to the species Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, or Homo antecessor. And with evidence of tool use to butcher animals and other hominins, likely to constitute the first evidence of cannibalism in a hominin species. Evidence of fire has also been found at the site, suggesting they cooked their meat. ref

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A million years ago fire was used, ash and charred bone, at Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa. Fire can be said to have a reasonably wide use and possibly being sacralized then, but we do know at some point it was attached to sacredness. At what point in humanoid history did these sacred rituals fully appear, and did shared feasting aid in this? What dreams were dreamed, what stories told around the fire? There seems to be fossil evidence of feasting on rhinos dating to around 2 million years ago. (likely was scavenged not killed in a hunt. The fossils and stone tools from the Philippines were dated to between 777,000 and 631,000 years ago and research confirmed that the butchering of the rhino took place around 700,000 years ago. ref, ref, ref 

 “Cooking makes food more digestible and kills off bacteria. Thus, changes were driven by cooked food. Around 1.9 million years ago some major changes occurred in hominin biology. Compared with its ancestors, Homo erectus had very small teeth, a small body, and a much larger brain. Digesting raw meat is difficult, using up about a third of the energy you have just consumed. In experiments with pythons, cooking meat reduced the cost of digestion by 13 %. Mice fed a 100 % meat diet lose weight, but if the meat is cooked they lose it more slowly.” ref

“That’s fascinating.” – Questioner  

Animals on Psychedelics: Survival of the Trippiest?

“There is an article in the Pharmaceutical Journal by Andrew Haynes that talks about the widespread use of psychedelics in the animal kingdom. Haynes’ argument for explaining this behavior rests on the idea of boredom-—literally bored animals are seeking pharmacological stimulation, much in the same way that bored humans seek pharmaceutical stimulation—but there might be something else going on.” ref 

STEVEN KOTLER a New York Times best-selling author and award-winning journalist covers this same topic in his book, “A Small Furry Prayer,” of which here is an excerpt that may offer  a deeper explanation for the origins of  animals are seeking pharmacological stimulation:

“In his 1983 book, From Chocolate to Morphine, University of Arizona physician Andrew Weil points out that children spin in circles to change their consciousness, while adults do the same thing with booze and drugs. So instinctive does this behavior appear that Weil suspected, perhaps humans aren’t the first species to actively pursue altered states. As it turns out, he was correct in his suspicions. In 2006, Jane Goodall and Marc Bekoff visited the Mona Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Spain. They met a chimp named Marco who dances during thunderstorms with such abandon that, as Bekoff explains it: “He appears to be in a trance.” Goodall has witnessed other chimps, usually adult males, enacting the same rituals near waterfalls. According to an article Bekoff wrote for New Scientists: “She described a chimpanzee approaching one of these falls with slightly bristled hair, a sign of heightened arousal. ‘As he gets closer, and the roar of the waterfall gets louder, his pace quickens, his hair becomes fully erect, and upon reaching the stream he performs a magnificent display close to the foot of the falls,’ she describes. ‘Standing upright, he sways rhythmically from foot to foot, stamping in the shallow, rushing water, picking up and hurling great rocks. Sometimes he climbs up slender vines that hang down from the trees high above and swings out into the spray of the falling water. This ‘waterfall dance’ may last ten to fifteen minutes.'” But dancing, while an effective method for altering one’s consciousness, is perhaps the long way around.” ref 

“In October 2006, National Public Radio’s All Things Considered considered Lady, a Cocker Spaniel spending a suspicious amount of time down by the backyard pond. “Lady would wander the area, disoriented and withdrawn, soporific and glassy-eyed,” Laura Mirsch, Lady’s owner, told NPR. Then there was that one night when Lady wouldn’t come back. Eventually, she staggered back from the cattails and opened her mouth like she was going to throw up. She didn’t throw up. Instead, recalls Mirsch, “out popped this disgusting toad.” The toad was Bufo alvarius, a Colorado River toad whose skin contains two different tryptamines-the same psychoactive found in “magic mushrooms”-and licking Bufo produces heady hallucinations.” ref 

“And toad tripping dogs are just the beginning. Everywhere scientists have looked, they have found animals who love to party. Bees stoned on orchid nectar, goats gobbling magic mushrooms, birds chomping marijuana seeds, rats on opium, also mice, lizards, flies, spiders and cockroaches on opium, elephants drunk on anything they can find-usually fermented fruit in a bog hole, but they’re known to raid breweries in India as well-felines crazy for cat-nip, cows loco for loco grass, moths preferring the incredibly hallucinogenic datura flower, mandrills taking the even stronger iboga root. So prevalent is this behavior that researchers now believe, as UCLA psychopharmacologist Ronald Siegel wrote in his 1989 Intoxication: The Universal Drive For Mind-Altering Substances: “the pursuit of intoxication with drugs is a primary motivational force in the behavior of organisms.” ref 

“Siegel thinks the taste for intoxication is acquired and not inborn, though once acquired look out. “Unlike other acquired motives, intoxication functions with the strengths of a primary drive in its ability to steer the behavior of individuals, societies, and species. Like sex, hunger, and thirst, the fourth drive, to pursue intoxication, can never be repressed. It is biologically inevitable.” But from an evolutionary perspective, this is a difficult inevitability to explain. “Many animals engage these plants, or their manufactured allies, despite the danger of toxic or poisonous effects,” Siegel continues. “The stupefied bees quickly become victims of predation. The carcasses of “drunken” birds litter the highways. Cats pay for their addiction to pleasure plants with brain damage. Cows poisoned with range weeds may eventually die. Inebriated elephants destroy much property and the lives of other animals. Disoriented monkeys ignore their young and wander from the safety of the troop. Humans are no different.” ref  

“According to Italian ethnobotanist Giorgio Samorini, in his 2001 Animals and Psychedelics, the risk is worth it because intoxication promotes what psychologist Edward de Bono once called lateral thinking-problem-solving through indirect and creative approaches. Lateral thinking is thinking outside the box, without which a species would be unable to come up with new solutions to old problems, without which a species would be unable to survive. De Bono thinks intoxication an important “liberating device,” freeing us from “rigidity of established ideas, schemes, divisions, categories and classifications.” Both Siegel and Samorini think animals use intoxicants for this reason, and they do so knowingly.” ref 

“Just like us, animals take specific drugs for specific purposes. Among the Navajo, the bear is a revered for teaching them about Osha, a root effective against stomach pains and bacteria infections. Wild carrot, as we learned from birds, repels mites. Horses in pain will hunt for willow stems because that’s where aspirin comes from. In the Gombe National Forest in Tanzania, chimps with digestive troubles swallow sunflower leaves whole. When Michael Huffman, from Kyoto University in Japan, took a closer look he found sunflower leaves are hairy and those hairs scrape worms from digestive tracts. These days, when companies like Shaman Pharmaceuticals send researchers into the Amazon to study the “old ways,” what they’re really after is medical information originally gleaned from watching animals.” ref 

“Hallucinogens are no different. Psychedelics are really chemical defenses-toxins manufactured by plants to avoid predation. Fungi, among our most prolific source of psychedelics, evolved six hundred million years ago, not coincidentally at the same time as plant-eating animals. Herbivores may have first ingested these psychoactives when the threat of starvation gave them no other choice, but later on, sought them out for different rewards. “For example,” writes Siegel, “morning glories, which contain the same alkaloid as ergot (the psychoactive basis for LSD), are eaten by rats which feed regularly on the plant’s vines and fruits. The rodents tend to avoid the larger concentrations of alkaloids in the seeds. Yet, when disturbed by severe weather conditions, a rat will occasionally snack on a single seed, then display the characteristic head-twitching of intoxication.” He also noted mandrills eating the hallucinogenic iboga root and then waiting two hours for the effects to kick in before picking a territory fight with a rival. Even Lady knew what she was doing. After her initial spate of toad-licking addiction, she learned to only party on the weekends.” ref 

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Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Animism: Respecting the Living World by Graham Harvey 

“How have human cultures engaged with and thought about animals, plants, rocks, clouds, and other elements in their natural surroundings? Do animals and other natural objects have a spirit or soul? What is their relationship to humans? In this new study, Graham Harvey explores current and past animistic beliefs and practices of Native Americans, Maori, Aboriginal Australians, and eco-pagans. He considers the varieties of animism found in these cultures as well as their shared desire to live respectfully within larger natural communities. Drawing on his extensive casework, Harvey also considers the linguistic, performative, ecological, and activist implications of these different animisms.” ref

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Low Gods “Earth” or Tutelary deity and High Gods “Sky” or Supreme deity

“An Earth goddess is a deification of the Earth. Earth goddesses are often associated with the “chthonic” deities of the underworld. Ki and Ninhursag are Mesopotamian earth goddesses. In Greek mythology, the Earth is personified as Gaia, corresponding to Roman Terra, Indic Prithvi/Bhūmi, etc. traced to an “Earth Mother” complementary to the “Sky Father” in Proto-Indo-European religion. Egyptian mythology exceptionally has a sky goddess and an Earth god.” ref

“A mother goddess is a goddess who represents or is a personification of nature, motherhood, fertility, creation, destruction or who embodies the bounty of the Earth. When equated with the Earth or the natural world, such goddesses are sometimes referred to as Mother Earth or as the Earth Mother. In some religious traditions or movements, Heavenly Mother (also referred to as Mother in Heaven or Sky Mother) is the wife or feminine counterpart of the Sky father or God the Father.” ref

“Any masculine sky god is often also king of the gods, taking the position of patriarch within a pantheon. Such king gods are collectively categorized as “sky father” deities, with a polarity between sky and earth often being expressed by pairing a “sky father” god with an “earth mother” goddess (pairings of a sky mother with an earth father are less frequent). A main sky goddess is often the queen of the gods and may be an air/sky goddess in her own right, though she usually has other functions as well with “sky” not being her main. In antiquity, several sky goddesses in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Near East were called Queen of Heaven. Neopagans often apply it with impunity to sky goddesses from other regions who were never associated with the term historically. The sky often has important religious significance. Many religions, both polytheistic and monotheistic, have deities associated with the sky.” ref

“In comparative mythology, sky father is a term for a recurring concept in polytheistic religions of a sky god who is addressed as a “father”, often the father of a pantheon and is often either a reigning or former King of the Gods. The concept of “sky father” may also be taken to include Sun gods with similar characteristics, such as Ra. The concept is complementary to an “earth mother“. “Sky Father” is a direct translation of the Vedic Dyaus Pita, etymologically descended from the same Proto-Indo-European deity name as the Greek Zeûs Pater and Roman Jupiter and Germanic Týr, Tir or Tiwaz, all of which are reflexes of the same Proto-Indo-European deity’s name, *Dyēus Ph₂tḗr. While there are numerous parallels adduced from outside of Indo-European mythology, there are exceptions (e.g. In Egyptian mythology, Nut is the sky mother and Geb is the earth father).” ref

Tutelary deity

“A tutelary (also tutelar) is a deity or spirit who is a guardian, patron, or protector of a particular place, geographic feature, person, lineage, nation, culture, or occupation. The etymology of “tutelary” expresses the concept of safety and thus of guardianship. In late Greek and Roman religion, one type of tutelary deity, the genius, functions as the personal deity or daimon of an individual from birth to death. Another form of personal tutelary spirit is the familiar spirit of European folklore.” ref

“A tutelary (also tutelar) in Korean shamanism, jangseung and sotdae were placed at the edge of villages to frighten off demons. They were also worshiped as deities. Seonangshin is the patron deity of the village in Korean tradition and was believed to embody the Seonangdang. In Philippine animism, Diwata or Lambana are deities or spirits that inhabit sacred places like mountains and mounds and serve as guardians. Such as: Maria Makiling is the deity who guards Mt. Makiling and Maria Cacao and Maria Sinukuan. In Shinto, the spirits, or kami, which give life to human bodies come from nature and return to it after death. Ancestors are therefore themselves tutelaries to be worshiped. And similarly, Native American beliefs such as Tonás, tutelary animal spirit among the Zapotec and Totems, familial or clan spirits among the Ojibwe, can be animals.” ref

“A tutelary (also tutelar) in Austronesian beliefs such as: Atua (gods and spirits of the Polynesian peoples such as the Māori or the Hawaiians), Hanitu (Bunun of Taiwan‘s term for spirit), Hyang (Kawi, Sundanese, Javanese, and Balinese Supreme Being, in ancient Java and Bali mythology and this spiritual entity, can be either divine or ancestral), Kaitiaki (New Zealand Māori term used for the concept of guardianship, for the sky, the sea, and the land), Kawas (mythology) (divided into 6 groups: gods, ancestors, souls of the living, spirits of living things, spirits of lifeless objects, and ghosts), Tiki (Māori mythology, Tiki is the first man created by either Tūmatauenga or Tāne and represents deified ancestors found in most Polynesian cultures). ” ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref

Mesopotamian Tutelary Deities can be seen as ones related to City-States 

“Historical city-states included Sumerian cities such as Uruk and Ur; Ancient Egyptian city-states, such as Thebes and Memphis; the Phoenician cities (such as Tyre and Sidon); the five Philistine city-states; the Berber city-states of the Garamantes; the city-states of ancient Greece (the poleis such as Athens, Sparta, Thebes, and Corinth); the Roman Republic (which grew from a city-state into a vast empire); the Italian city-states from the Middle Ages to the early modern period, such as Florence, Siena, Ferrara, Milan (which as they grew in power began to dominate neighboring cities) and Genoa and Venice, which became powerful thalassocracies; the Mayan and other cultures of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica (including cities such as Chichen Itza, Tikal, Copán and Monte Albán); the central Asian cities along the Silk Road; the city-states of the Swahili coast; Ragusa; states of the medieval Russian lands such as Novgorod and Pskov; and many others.” ref

“The Uruk period (ca. 4000 to 3100 BCE; also known as Protoliterate period) of Mesopotamia, named after the Sumerian city of Uruk, this period saw the emergence of urban life in Mesopotamia and the Sumerian civilization. City-States like Uruk and others had a patron tutelary City Deity along with a Priest-King.” ref

“Chinese folk religion, both past, and present, includes myriad tutelary deities. Exceptional individuals, highly cultivated sages, and prominent ancestors can be deified and honored after death. Lord Guan is the patron of military personnel and police, while Mazu is the patron of fishermen and sailors. Such as Tu Di Gong (Earth Deity) is the tutelary deity of a locality, and each individual locality has its own Earth Deity and Cheng Huang Gong (City God) is the guardian deity of an individual city, worshipped by local officials and locals since imperial times.” ref

“A tutelary (also tutelar) in Hinduism, personal tutelary deities are known as ishta-devata, while family tutelary deities are known as Kuladevata. Gramadevata are guardian deities of villages. Devas can also be seen as tutelary. Shiva is the patron of yogis and renunciants. City goddesses include: Mumbadevi (Mumbai), Sachchika (Osian); Kuladevis include: Ambika (Porwad), and Mahalakshmi. In NorthEast India Meitei mythology and religion (Sanamahism) of Manipur, there are various types of tutelary deities, among which Lam Lais are the most predominant ones. Tibetan Buddhism has Yidam as a tutelary deity. Dakini is the patron of those who seek knowledge.” ref

“A tutelary (also tutelar) The Greeks also thought deities guarded specific places: for instance, Athena was the patron goddess of the city of Athens. Socrates spoke of hearing the voice of his personal spirit or daimonion:

You have often heard me speak of an oracle or sign which comes to me … . This sign I have had ever since I was a child. The sign is a voice which comes to me and always forbids me to do something which I am going to do, but never commands me to do anything, and this is what stands in the way of my being a politician.” ref

“Tutelary deities who guard and preserve a place or a person are fundamental to ancient Roman religion. The tutelary deity of a man was his Genius, that of a woman her Juno. In the Imperial era, the Genius of the Emperor was a focus of Imperial cult. An emperor might also adopt a major deity as his personal patron or tutelary, as Augustus did Apollo. Precedents for claiming the personal protection of a deity were established in the Republican era, when for instance the Roman dictator Sulla advertised the goddess Victory as his tutelary by holding public games (ludi) in her honor.” ref

“Each town or city had one or more tutelary deities, whose protection was considered particularly vital in time of war and siege. Rome itself was protected by a goddess whose name was to be kept ritually secret on pain of death (for a supposed case, see Quintus Valerius Soranus). The Capitoline Triad of Juno, Jupiter, and Minerva were also tutelaries of Rome. The Italic towns had their own tutelary deities. Juno often had this function, as at the Latin town of Lanuvium and the Etruscan city of Veii, and was often housed in an especially grand temple on the arx (citadel) or other prominent or central location. The tutelary deity of Praeneste was Fortuna, whose oracle was renowned.” ref

“The Roman ritual of evocatio was premised on the belief that a town could be made vulnerable to military defeat if the power of its tutelary deity were diverted outside the city, perhaps by the offer of superior cult at Rome. The depiction of some goddesses such as the Magna Mater (Great Mother, or Cybele) as “tower-crowned” represents their capacity to preserve the city. A town in the provinces might adopt a deity from within the Roman religious sphere to serve as its guardian, or syncretize its own tutelary with such; for instance, a community within the civitas of the Remi in Gaul adopted Apollo as its tutelary, and at the capital of the Remi (present-day Rheims), the tutelary was Mars Camulus.” ref 

Household deity (a kind of or related to a Tutelary deity)

“A household deity is a deity or spirit that protects the home, looking after the entire household or certain key members. It has been a common belief in paganism as well as in folklore across many parts of the world. Household deities fit into two types; firstly, a specific deity – typically a goddess – often referred to as a hearth goddess or domestic goddess who is associated with the home and hearth, such as the ancient Greek Hestia.” ref

“The second type of household deities are those that are not one singular deity, but a type, or species of animistic deity, who usually have lesser powers than major deities. This type was common in the religions of antiquity, such as the Lares of ancient Roman religion, the Gashin of Korean shamanism, and Cofgodas of Anglo-Saxon paganism. These survived Christianisation as fairy-like creatures existing in folklore, such as the Anglo-Scottish Brownie and Slavic Domovoy.” ref

“Household deities were usually worshipped not in temples but in the home, where they would be represented by small idols (such as the teraphim of the Bible, often translated as “household gods” in Genesis 31:19 for example), amulets, paintings, or reliefs. They could also be found on domestic objects, such as cosmetic articles in the case of Tawaret. The more prosperous houses might have a small shrine to the household god(s); the lararium served this purpose in the case of the Romans. The gods would be treated as members of the family and invited to join in meals, or be given offerings of food and drink.” ref

“In many religions, both ancient and modern, a god would preside over the home. Certain species, or types, of household deities, existed. An example of this was the Roman Lares. Many European cultures retained house spirits into the modern period. Some examples of these include:

• Brownie (Scotland and England) or Hob (England) / Kobold (Germany) / Goblin / Hobgoblin
• Domovoy (Slavic)
• Nisse (Norwegian or Danish) / Tomte (Swedish) / Tonttu (Finnish)
• Húsvættir (Norse)” ref

“Although the cosmic status of household deities was not as lofty as that of the Twelve Olympians or the Aesir, they were also jealous of their dignity and also had to be appeased with shrines and offerings, however humble. Because of their immediacy they had arguably more influence on the day-to-day affairs of men than the remote gods did. Vestiges of their worship persisted long after Christianity and other major religions extirpated nearly every trace of the major pagan pantheons. Elements of the practice can be seen even today, with Christian accretions, where statues to various saints (such as St. Francis) protect gardens and grottos. Even the gargoyles found on older churches, could be viewed as guardians partitioning a sacred space.” ref

“For centuries, Christianity fought a mop-up war against these lingering minor pagan deities, but they proved tenacious. For example, Martin Luther‘s Tischreden have numerous – quite serious – references to dealing with kobolds. Eventually, rationalism and the Industrial Revolution threatened to erase most of these minor deities, until the advent of romantic nationalism rehabilitated them and embellished them into objects of literary curiosity in the 19th century. Since the 20th century this literature has been mined for characters for role-playing games, video games, and other fantasy personae, not infrequently invested with invented traits and hierarchies somewhat different from their mythological and folkloric roots.” ref

“In contradistinction to both Herbert Spencer and Edward Burnett Tylor, who defended theories of animistic origins of ancestor worship, Émile Durkheim saw its origin in totemism. In reality, this distinction is somewhat academic, since totemism may be regarded as a particularized manifestation of animism, and something of a synthesis of the two positions was attempted by Sigmund Freud. In Freud’s Totem and Taboo, both totem and taboo are outward expressions or manifestations of the same psychological tendency, a concept which is complementary to, or which rather reconciles, the apparent conflict. Freud preferred to emphasize the psychoanalytic implications of the reification of metaphysical forces, but with particular emphasis on its familial nature. This emphasis underscores, rather than weakens, the ancestral component.” ref

“William Edward Hearn, a noted classicist, and jurist, traced the origin of domestic deities from the earliest stages as an expression of animism, a belief system thought to have existed also in the neolithic, and the forerunner of Indo-European religion. In his analysis of the Indo-European household, in Chapter II “The House Spirit”, Section 1, he states:

The belief which guided the conduct of our forefathers was … the spirit rule of dead ancestors.” ref

“In Section 2 he proceeds to elaborate:

It is thus certain that the worship of deceased ancestors is a vera causa, and not a mere hypothesis. …

In the other European nations, the Slavs, the Teutons, and the Kelts, the House Spirit appears with no less distinctness. … [T]he existence of that worship does not admit of doubt. … The House Spirits had a multitude of other names which it is needless here to enumerate, but all of which are more or less expressive of their friendly relations with man. … In [England] … [h]e is the Brownie. … In Scotland this same Brownie is well known. He is usually described as attached to particular families, with whom he has been known to reside for centuries, threshing the corn, cleaning the house, and performing similar household tasks. His favorite gratification was milk and honey.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Hinduism around 3,700 to 3,500 years old. ref

 Judaism around 3,450 or 3,250 years old. (The first writing in the bible was “Paleo-Hebrew” dated to around 3,000 years ago Khirbet Qeiyafa is the site of an ancient fortress city overlooking the Elah Valley. And many believe the religious Jewish texts were completed around 2,500) ref, ref

Judaism is around 3,450 or 3,250 years old. (“Paleo-Hebrew” 3,000 years ago and Torah 2,500 years ago)

“Judaism is an Abrahamic, its roots as an organized religion in the Middle East during the Bronze Age. Some scholars argue that modern Judaism evolved from Yahwism, the religion of ancient Israel and Judah, by the late 6th century BCE, and is thus considered to be one of the oldest monotheistic religions.” ref

“Yahwism is the name given by modern scholars to the religion of ancient Israel, essentially polytheistic, with a plethora of gods and goddesses. Heading the pantheon was Yahweh, the national god of the Israelite kingdoms of Israel and Judah, with his consort, the goddess Asherah; below them were second-tier gods and goddesses such as Baal, Shamash, Yarikh, Mot, and Astarte, all of whom had their own priests and prophets and numbered royalty among their devotees, and a third and fourth tier of minor divine beings, including the mal’ak, the messengers of the higher gods, who in later times became the angels of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Yahweh, however, was not the ‘original’ god of Israel “Isra-El”; it is El, the head of the Canaanite pantheon, whose name forms the basis of the name “Israel”, and none of the Old Testament patriarchs, the tribes of Israel, the Judges, or the earliest monarchs, have a Yahwistic theophoric name (i.e., one incorporating the name of Yahweh).” ref

“El is a Northwest Semitic word meaning “god” or “deity“, or referring (as a proper name) to any one of multiple major ancient Near Eastern deities. A rarer form, ‘ila, represents the predicate form in Old Akkadian and in Amorite. The word is derived from the Proto-Semitic *ʔil-, meaning “god”. Specific deities known as ‘El or ‘Il include the supreme god of the ancient Canaanite religion and the supreme god of East Semitic speakers in Mesopotamia’s Early Dynastic Period. ʼĒl is listed at the head of many pantheons. In some Canaanite and Ugaritic sources, ʼĒl played a role as father of the gods, of creation, or both. For example, in the Ugaritic texts, ʾil mlk is understood to mean “ʼĒl the King” but ʾil hd as “the god Hadad“. The Semitic root ʾlh (Arabic ʾilāh, Aramaic ʾAlāh, ʾElāh, Hebrew ʾelōah) may be ʾl with a parasitic h, and ʾl may be an abbreviated form of ʾlh. In Ugaritic the plural form meaning “gods” is ʾilhm, equivalent to Hebrew ʾelōhîm “powers”. In the Hebrew texts this word is interpreted as being semantically singular for “god” by biblical commentators. However the documentary hypothesis for the Old Testament (corresponds to the Jewish Torah) developed originally in the 1870s, identifies these that different authors – the Jahwist, Elohist, Deuteronomist, and the Priestly source – were responsible for editing stories from a polytheistic religion into those of a monotheistic religion. Inconsistencies that arise between monotheism and polytheism in the texts are reflective of this hypothesis.” ref

Jainism around 2,599 – 2,527 years old. ref

Confucianism around 2,600 – 2,551 years old. ref

Buddhism around 2,563/2,480 – 2,483/2,400 years old. ref

Christianity around 2,o00 years old. ref

Shinto around 1,305 years old. ref

Islam around 1407–1385 years old. ref

Sikhism around 548–478 years old. ref

Bahá’í around 200–125 years old. ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope (Said as “At” “Hope”)/(Autodidact Polymath but not good at math):

Axiological Atheist, Anti-theist, Anti-religionist, Secular Humanist, Rationalist, Writer, Artist, Jeweler, Poet, “autodidact” Philosopher, schooled in Psychology, and “autodidact” Armchair Archaeology/Anthropology/Pre-Historian (Knowledgeable in the range of: 1 million to 5,000/4,000 years ago). I am an anarchist socialist politically. Reasons for or Types of Atheism

My Website, My Blog, & Short-writing or Quotes, My YouTube, Twitter: @AthopeMarie, and My Email: damien.marie.athope@gmail.com