by Alex Letcher
There are a handful of examples, however. The iceman' the Neolithic man whose wounded body was preserved where it fell five thousand years ago in the snow-capped Tyrolean Alps along the present day Italian-Austrian border was found to have been carrying pieces of fungus strung upon a leather strap.'8 These were of Fotnes fomentarius, a type of bracket fungus that grows out of trees in hard scallop-like shelves and has been used as tinder since prehistoric times (pieces of this fungus have been found by the hearths of Mesolithic settlements at Starr Carr in Yorkshire and Maglemose in Denmark);" and Piptoporus betulinus, the Birch polypore or razor-strop fungus, so called because it is excellent for honing the edge of a razor. For what purpose the Iceman had them is unclear (metal razors having yet to be invented in the Stone Age): they could have been used for tinder, medicine or magic, or have had some other symbolic significance that is unknown to us.
A variety of puffball, Bovista nigrescensy has been discovered at various British sites: from an Iron Age midden at Skara Brae in Orkney, from a Roman fortification at Stanwick in Yorkshire, and from a Roman well in Scole in Norfolk. Like many puffballs, this species is edible when young but not by the time it has produced spores, as all these examples had. The presence of the fungus at these sites is therefore mysterious: it may have been used for magic, for medicine or even for loft insulation!10 Further afield in North America, nineteenth-century grave 'guardians', that is carved figures of faces and animals placed in indigenous graves, appear to be made from the dried remains of the mushroom Fomitopsis officinalis, and not from wood as was originally thought/'
And that, along with just one or two more examples, is pretty much the extent of it. Needless to say, there is not a single instance of a magic mushroom being preserved in the archaeological record anywhere. Supporters of the ancient mushrooming thesis have therefore invoked several other related lines of evidence to support their case but, as we shall see, none of these inferences is unequivocal, and each is open to a range of alternative explanations.
The first comes from the fact that our European prehistoric ancestors were certainly knowledgeable about a range of other psychoactive plants. Preserved poppy heads uncovered in Britain, Switzerland, and Spain some of which were sterile, domesticated varieties suggest that the dreamy but addictive analgesic drug opium (Papaver somniferum) was being deliberately produced and consumed from the Neolithic onwards." Cannabis (Cannabis sativa) seems also to have been cultivated in Britain and Eastern Europe from perhaps the late Neolithic, and more commonly in the Iron Age." The more menacing henbane (Hyoscyamus niger) may have been imported into Britain during the Neolithic, for seeds and pollen have been found in residues adhering to so-called Grooved Ware pottery sherds at Balfarg in Scotland." Henbane seeds were found buried in a leather pouch, together with the body of a woman, in a Dark Age grave near Fyrkat in Denmark.15 And even a quantity of ergot sclerotia were found in the stomach of one of the exquisitely preserved Iron Age 'bog-bodies', dredged up from the peat in another part of Denmark near the town of Grauballe.1" Surely, the argument goes, psychedelic know-how was transferable, and thus if a culture employed these psychoactive plants, it would certainly have known about, and used, hallucinogenic fungi.
Unfortunately, there are two objections to this line of reasoning. The first is that the presence of these plants in the archaeological record is no guarantee that they were used for their psychoactive properties. Poppy seeds are a nutritious food source, while opium is a powerful painkiller and an effective treatment for respiratory and digestive complaints. Cannabis likewise has a range of medical uses, and has long been grown for its fibres, from which strong and durable cloth, canvas and rope can all be made.17 Henbane seeds might have been purely for show, a proclamation that the owner had mastery over a poisonous plant (shamanism, particularly in Siberia, has often been accompanied by conjuring tricks plunging hands into boiling water, swords through the body, and so on to demonstrate superhuman powers'"). As for Grauballe Man, his last meal might have been eaten in full knowledge of ergot's disturbingly mind-altering effects. But then again, this poor unfortunate seems to have been rather unpleasantly executed (whether as a criminal or as a willing religious sacrifice we do not know), for he had his leg broken and suffered a traumatic blow to the head, and he might have died before any effects of the ergot became apparent. The administering of a plant that was known, say, to terminate pregnancies might simply have held a terrifying symbolic force for him.
The second problem is the one of cultural specificity that I have already outlined. Cultures that use one psychoactive plant may have a socially constructed aversion towards, or be wholly ignorant of, another. Thus, when the late advocate for the magic mushroom, Terence McKenna, travelled to a region of the Amazon to investigate the use of an indigenous psychedelic plant preparation, oo-koo-he, he found that the locals were quite ignorant about the magic cubensis mushrooms sprouting abundantly from their cattle dung." Psychoactive know-how is evidently not always horizontally transferable. Mushrooms do have a distinctive form, however, and so a second, more promising line of inference has come from studying ancient and prehistoric art for obvious images of mushrooms.
Perhaps more than any other archaeological discipline, the study of ancient art is as tantalising as it is rewarding. Tracing the various ways in which ancient peoples used marks and lines, pigments and paints often daubed straight onto smooth rock faces or cave walls to express themselves necessarily narrows the gap between our world and theirs; yet all too often the exact meaning of their artwork eludes us. Commonly, archaeologists have to live with the uncertainty of entertaining a range of possible interpretations.*0 Of course, it is reasonable to assume that if ancient cultures did centralise the use of magic mushrooms they would have depicted this fact in their artwork. The trouble is that it is not always easy to tell whether something that looks to us like a mushroom really was intended to be one, and a magic one at that. The context in which the art appears is often the only thing that can help us decide, as the following example, taken not from prehistory but from the Middle Ages, demonstrates.
In Hildesheim in Germany there is a magnificent Gothic cathedral, which is renowned for its pair of cast bronze doors. Each contains eight panels depicting biblical images, but one in particular has caught the attention of mushroom enthusiasts, for there, on the right-hand door, is a panel that seems to show human figures dwarfed by what looks extremely like a giant Liberty Cap. Various writers have suggested that this is evidence for a medieval magic mushroom cult persisting secretly in spite of Christian oppression. Some mushroomloving craftsman must have slipped the mushroom into the image as a hidden but demonstrative gesture of defiance for the benefit of other members of his secret cult.31
Medieval bronze door panel from the cathedral at Hildesheim, Germany. Does this reveal the mushroom's influence at the root of Christianity? In fact, in spite of its resemblance to a Liberty Cap, the plant dwarfing the human figures is a stylised fig-tree. Photo by Paul Stamets, reprinted with permission.
Sadly, careful consideration of the context in which the doors were made shows only a slight chance that this interpretation is true. The doors were commissioned by Bishop Bernward in 1015 as the finishing touch to his already magnificent cathedral. The images were extremely carefully chosen, for the eight descending panels on the left show the fall of Man, and the eight ascending panels on the right his redemption through Christ. Moreover, every image on one door appears next to, and is paired with, its matched antithetical opposite on the other. Apart from being a brilliant piece of metalworking, the doors are a coherent structural masterpiece.51 Given that every detail of every image held significance, and that the message on the doors was so carefully constructed, it seems improbable that a magic mushroom could have been surreptitiously slipped in without anyone noticing. Nor could a secret mushroom cult have persisted and left such an emphatic mark upon such a high-profile expression of religious power and piety without
there being some other evidence for its existence. But of course there is none to be found anywhere, for there was no cult. The image on the door is simply a stylised representation of that most biblical of plants, the fig-tree.55
Clearly it is not enough to identify an image as a representation of a magic mushroom on the basis of homology alone. The problem with prehistoric art is that very often we have only the image, and none of the contextual evidence that would tip the interpretation one way or another. For example, amateur archaeologist Reid Kaplan published an oft-cited paper in 1975 which he argued that a recurring mushroom-shaped motif found on various Scandinavian Bronze Age razors and petroglyphs depicts the fly-agaric, which he imagined formed a part of a solar-based religion. Others have suggested, however, that the motif is the sail of a ship, a tree, or a hatchet.54 There is no easy way of telling which, if any, is the correct interpretation.
More recently, laser scans have revealed some hitherto undiscovered Bronze Age carvings on the sarsen stones of Britain's most famous ancient monument, Stonehenge.55 Some of them look remarkably like mushrooms in cross section, a fact that has led some archaeologists to speculate that not only do these depict magic mushrooms, notched up like marks on the bedpost, but that the entire monument was built to resemble a magical mushroom fairy ring.56 The more widely accepted and prosaic theory is that the carvings are of Bronze Age axes, though their significance is unknown. Perhaps the most eye-catching artefact from the later Iron Age is the Gundestrup cauldron, a magnificent silver cauldron intricately decorated with pictures of animals, plants and even a horned figure, perhaps a deity. The archaeologist Robert Wallis has tentatively suggested that the vegetation might be a representation of a psychoactive plant, or even, because of the pointy leaves, the Liberty Cap." Then again, he accepts that it could be entirely decorative.
But perhaps the most famous example comes from the abundance of rock art found upon the Tassili plateau of southern Algeria, which dates, incredibly, from the Neolithic to the start of the Common Era. Though not discovered by him, one particular Neolithic image was popularised by the aforementioned mushroom advocate Terence McKenna, who reproduced it in two of his widely read books. Subsequently, it has become an icon for the psychedelic mushroom community, appearing on posters, T-shirts, postcards and, of course, liberally across the Internet. The image depicts a squat, male, human figure, standing braced against the earth as if shouldering a heavy load. He wears feathers or plumes upon his head, and a bee-shaped mask. His form is covered in a psychedelic pattern of lozenges and dots, which swirl out between his legs. But most strikingly of all, he appears to be clutching handfuls of mushrooms, which also sprout alarmingly from his legs, arms and torso. Surely here is incontrovertible evidence: a bemushroomed shaman depicted in the full force of a psilocybin-induced ecstasy?
Well, possibly. The popular image that has been so widely circulated is not a photo of the original, but a copy, a drawing made during the 1990s by McKenna's then wife and mushroom enthusiast in her own right, Kat Harrison. Neither went to see the original rock painting in Algeria, but derived their interpretation from photos in a book, The Rock Paintings of Tassili by Jean-Dominique Lajoux.59 While Harrison strove accurately to copy the original, and to enhance only those aspects of it that had been damaged and obscured,40 her representation, informed by her own mushroom experiences, subtly reinforced this shamanistic interpretation. So in her drawing the protuberances definitely look like mushrooms, whereas in the original the semblance is not quite so emphatic: they could be mushrooms or they could be, say, arrows. Similarly, in the original the plumes from the figure's headdress are not distinguishable as feathers; neither are the swirling psychedelic patterns quite so obviously swirling and psychedelic. Without any shadow of a doubt, Kat Harrison's striking
Kat Harrison s famous rendition of a piece of prehistoric rock art from Tassili, Algeria. Harrison's iconic drawing clearly depicts a bemushroomed shaman, but whether that was the intention of the original Neolithic artist(s) remains moot. Image © Kat Harrison, reprinted with permission.
facsimile depicts a bemushroomed shaman, and has rightly been adopted as such, but whether that was the intention of the original artist(s) is far from settled.
For instance, there is the contextual presence of other closely related pieces of art from the same region that depict the same 'beemasked' figure but without any 'mushrooms'. If the mushrooms were the most important aspect of the figure, why are they absent from these other pictures? Curiously, mushroom enthusiasts have little to say about a further image of a woman bent over with 'mushrooms' apparently sprouting from her derriere.41 Could it be that for these ancient artists mushrooms had a more scatological or sexual significance? Or that the mushroom's more typical association with decay meant that the bee-masked 'shaman' was actually some apocalyptic figure reminding the viewer of mortality and death? Then again, if the mask was really meant to look like a bee, as McKenna thought, could it not be that those 'mushrooms' were actually arrows or stings, symbols of some superhuman power? Lajoux thought the 'mushroom' protuberances incomprehensible and saw the figure as an anthropomorphised moufflon, or sheep.
McKenna also drew attention to another image from Tassili, which seems to show some anthropomorphised flat-capped mushroom figures, with faces, arms and legs, running while clutching 'mushrooms' in their hands. Admittedly, these figures are more convincing as mushrooms, but then again one is reminded of the cloth-capped jesters that appear in medieval art and have nothing to do with either mushrooms or psychedelia.41 The point remains that all the so-called incontrovertible visual evidence produced by enthusiasts to argue for prehistoric mushroom use turns out to be open to many and varied alternative interpretations. In each case, the mushroom interpretation may be correct, but it may equally very well not be.
This is clearly an unsatisfactory state of affairs for both academics and partisan enthusiasts alike, but recently the discipline of rock-art studies was shaken up by two academics, David Lewis-Williams and Thomas Dowson, determined to set it on a more scientific and unequivocal basis. In the process they argued that some Palaeolithic rock art was an attempt to represent hallucinations obtained in trances and other altered states of consciousness, a move that has split the archaeological community ever since. Their 'three stages of trance' model is one of the most hotly contested issues in current archaeology, and has triggered more than one good old-fashioned academic spat between the various parties.43
They began their study by examining data from earlier neurophysiology! investigations into the kinds of hallucination produced by the psychoactive drug mescaline, and by certain types of migraine.44 From these they developed their three-stage model of trance. The first stage, a light trance, is marked by the appearance of so-called phosphenes or entoptic hallucinations: that is, hallucinations that are generated within the physical apparatus of the vision system (these can be seen, for example, when we rub our eyes a little too vigorously45)As they are produced by the vagaries of our shared human physiology, they are uniformly experienced across cultures. But as the trance deepens into the second level, these entoptic hallucinations become consciously or unconsciously interpreted as more culturally specific 'iconic' forms. Thus, a person in this second stage seeing a zigzag might regard it as, say, a snake or a lightning strike depending on the relative significance of each of these to his or her culture. At the third and deepest level of trance, subjects are unable to make any distinction between entoptic and iconic forms, for they are plunged into an overwhelmingly iconic experience. Thus, they might feel themselves in the presence of the deities and mythological beings specific to their world view.
According to Lewis-Williams and Dowson, each stage of trance produces its own characteristic hallucinations, but from a cross-cultural point of view, universally experienced entoptic hallucinations are easiest to recognise. Thus, they abstracted what they regarded as the six typical entoptics: grids, parallel lines, dots, zigzags, filig
rees and nested curves. Their aim then was to see whether any of these 'trance signatures' appeared in examples of rock art.
Originally they tested their model on the petroglyphs of the San people of southern Africa, which were known to have been created immediately following participation in communal trance rituals. The archaeologists were excited to find both entoptic and iconic images that corresponded well with the shapes predicted by their three-stage model. Gathering momentum, they then applied the model to prehistoric art from Europe, from the Upper Palaeolithic, and again thought they found the presence of entoptic, entoptic/iconic and iconic forms. In short, it looked as if this European rock art had been produced by people who were wholly familiar with altered states of consciousness.
Prior to the three stages of trance model, a few anthropologists had wondered whether indigenous art might not have had its origins in hallucinogenically inspired visions.46 During the 1960s, a few intrepid Western investigators found that under the influence of Mexican magic mushrooms they saw Aztec-style patterns woven throughout their hallucinations.47 The problem was that it might have been their cultural expectations, rather than some essential property of the mushrooms, that determined the form of these mutable inner tapestries. Subjectivity could never be entirely ruled out. LewisWilliams and Dowson's model appeared to put the matter on a much more scientific, objective basis and it was eagerly followed by a range of academic studies purporting to have found additional evidence for trance experiences expressed through American and European prehistoric art.4X Some of these studies argued that psilocybin mushrooms lay behind the visions.
Eye-catching headlines in the press about 'Stone Age Psychedelia' and 'Raves in the Caves'49 did much to propel this appealing idea into popular consciousness,50 but the equally compelling counterarguments, and the often impassioned and vitriolic manner in which the debate has been played out, are pretty much unknown beyond academia.5' It would take far too much space to summarise them all here but, once again, most rest on the problem of cultural specificity and the method's failure to escape subjectivity.