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I will be illustrating what some counter-culture philosophers, anthropologist, biologist and artist call The Fall, or The Fall into History. I will combine biology, philosophy and shamanism in order to cast a different light on the emergence of the human soul and also the emergence of power, oppression and hierarchy. The theory is called the Stoned Ape and was thought up by Terence McKenna, an American art historian, philosopher and psychonaut that has gained underground fame as a counter-culture writer and lecturer between the 60s and the 90s. This theory also casts a light on the problems we inherit from history; Western culture is the crowning disaster of this draconian trajectory through the ages. What happened to Paradise?

We begin our story in the cradle of mankind, Africa. Africa is going through environmental changes; the rainforest is retreating due to increases in temperature, transforming into an expanding grassland environment. In the canopy of the African rainforest, the hominid has been evolving for more than 30 million years, among the primate destined to become humans, many different primates live – small, large, peaceful and ferocious. The other groups of animals include a variety of elephants, rhinoceroses, hyenas, bear dogs, anteaters, horses, saber-tooth cats, bats and many others – most of these animals exist today, but they have gone from a plethora of subspecies to only a few. Some animals achieve evolutionary climax, like the ants, which means that the organism has fully met the requirements of the environment they live in, and they survive as long as nothing changes. But when conditions change, the animals have to change or perish. When environmental change happen a species have to find other sources of food in that environment, this challenge is called dietary pressure. Animals that are close to evolutionary climax have a harder time to be flexible enough to survive the change; being fully evolved for one source of food means disaster if that source is removed. However a younger species, like the hominid, is still malleable enough to go in the direction of the change. The hominid was also a highly sentient animal, making it flexible enough to change with the environment. The hominid was a social animal with a relatively sophisticated communication, living in packs with an alpha male as their leader. They ate fruits, vegetation and small insects. They kept themselves to the safety of the canopy, away from the predators on the ground. However the retreating rainforest forced the hominid to the ground, the expanding grassland made the hominids habitat smaller and smaller. The hominid was forced to forage for food on the ground, a new environment with the danger of predators and unknown opportunities. It is during this time of change that McKenna suggests the hominid encountered a mushroom called Stropharia Cubensis, which contains a psychoactive substance called psilocybin.