This is not quite true because “dose makes the poison”. Foragers would have protocols to evaluate just by dosing. You can safely lick most berries and mushrooms and use that as a strong identifier.
Me playing Vintage Story:
Everything we currently eat or are able to eat was established by the deaths of millions of people who helped us to figure out what not to eat. And we’re dumb animals, so often it would take several deaths or unfortunate circumstances before we figured out what was bad for us.
It’s kind of like OSHA rules and regulations … it’s all written in blood and death.
Absolutely right. But I think mushrooms are their own category of high-risk-high-reward.
Some mushrooms grow back very quickly and are easy to prepare, others are rare but packed with nutrients, some have amazing therapeutic properties… and then, some kill you in the most gruesome and irreversible manner imaginable. They’ll permanently shut down your kidneys or your sweat glands and then you’re in for hell on earth until you expire.
Compared to vegetables: people would test out herbs on their skin first to see how they’d react. And even if a herb makes you sick, you’ll most likely recover within a few days. It’s not the end of the world, even in a stoneage setting.
Step one, call Kevin.
You could say the same our very DNA. Natural selection provided the guard rails that shaped evolution over the eons. And you know that was on the other side of those guard rails? Blood and death! :D
They mainly just observed what other animals ate…
What other animals eat ≠ safe for human. So still trail and error.
Sure, but it helps a lot. A lot of the chemicals in question attack aspects of physiology that many animals have in common, especially if you’re observing other mammals. You’d not be guaranteed safety, but you’d avoid most of the worst ones I’d reckon.
Do other animals eat psychedelics?
Yes. Brian from Family Guy had mushrooms one episode. Bojack Horseman did drugs to write his autobiography. Pretty sure Snoopy smokes weed, and Scooby Due is definitely second-hand high from Shaggy all the time
Supposedly reindeer will eat psychedelic mushrooms. Shamans would collect their urine and drink it to trip, i mean vision quest. The theory is the animal filters out the toxins but the psilocybin is just expelled.
Hunger will make you eat all kinds of things.
Like ass
Especially if you’ve a hunger for ass.
Imagine the first person to make bread. Do you know how much shit has to go right in the perfect amounts and time for it to work?
Think about stages to the process. Crush grain and mix with water to be easier to eat. Put paste on rock near fire to cook (flat bread). Leave paste sit for a while and wild yeast do their thing.
Can you imagine this as a punishment or execution method? Like, you committed some terrible crime or were on the wrong end of a feud, and now you are forced to eat a mushroom, wait two or three days, then get force fed (or even unknowingly fed!) the next one. Then you have some shalman/stone-age-food-scientist recording what happens.
They used children and dogs for sure
They were probably testing the mushrooms since before dogs existed
…before dogs existed? Do you think there was some date where we invented dogs? Wolfs have always been around, and all dogs are is domesticated wolfs.
