Origin of homosapiens: Did drugs create humans? | Norman Ohler and Lex Fridman

Yeah, it's called Stone Sapiens.

I discussed this with already mentioned Anthony Beevor, who is like the master in historical non-fiction books. I said, "Is it also possible to write a world history like about everything basically?" And he said, "Yes, it is possible. It's not easy because you have to understand like a lot, you know, and obviously it will always be a selection, it's clear, you know." That's why I also think that historical science is basically a fictional science. I mean, I have a foreword, the Blitzed foreword basically tells that story. Don't take it with a grain of salt, not only Blitzed but every historical book, because we weren't there, you know. That's what Johnny Depp said when the guy said, "So, you had like a mega pint of red wine." He just said, "Were you there?" You know, and the guy wasn't there. So, historical science is a fiction.

But, you know, it's a certain type of fiction and it's based on facts. So I'm not inventing anything in Stone Sapiens and I'm highly interested in the very early human history and there are not a lot of sources. So the beginning of the book is more speculative than for example the Vietnam War chapter. In the Vietnam War chapter, I'm in Hanoi speaking to Viet Cong generals asking them did they supply heroin to the GIs which diminished their fighting capability. That's you can research that and that's also a chapter. And by the way, the Vietnam War is not called the Vietnam War in Vietnam. It's called the American War. And also I was like sitting with these Viet Cong generals in Hanoi just like a few weeks ago for researching for Stone Sapiens and I said so did the Viet Cong bring heroin because there's never been evidence that it happened this way and they just looked at me and they said there's no Viet Cong. Like what are you talking about? You are the Viet Cong. He said no this is an American propaganda term. We were the North Vietnamese army. We never call ourselves the Viet Cong. So the book is full of surprises obviously. But the very early beginning of Stone Sapiens goes back to about 1.5 million years ago when Homo erectus, who also has become kind of famous by now, it's like the first human that really gets stuff done. You know, they get moving.

Yeah. They move. Yeah.

Why were they moving? I mean then you can examine exactly where they originated which was I mean it's all disputed by now that it's the great rift valley that only the most fossils have been found there but that doesn't mean that they originated there maybe they originated in the central African rainforest where fossils disintegrate and only there in the rift valley we still find it. So but we know for sure that in the great rift valley there was a plant called khat which is like a plant speed. So they were using that it's still being used now in these countries in Ethiopia, Yemen around the horn of Africa khat is very normal to use. You chew the leaves and it gives you like it's like an amphetamine. It's a plant amphetamine basically. So Homo erectus you can there's no proof that they actually used it but they were living in that area and the plant was there. So you can write about that. Yeah. So it's interesting because they were able to do certain things like they shed the fur.

They were the first ones to have to suddenly be naked and that has the effect that sweat glands are produced. Homo erectus could sweat it out basically when they were very hot.

What animals couldn't do because they had the fur. So an antelope can run faster than a Homo erectus. But after 10 minutes the antelope has to stop like what dogs do like the tongue goes out. And humans didn't have to do that because they were sweating. So they developed the jogging mode basically.

So they were jogging. They were not sprinting to get the animal. They were jogging it. And when the animal couldn't do it had to rest. Then the humans would come and hunt it down. So Homo erectus was evolutionary very good. And then later one of the species coming out of Homo erectus is Homo sapiens.

And Homo sapiens at one point there were only like about 1,500 people left. There were not a lot of Homo sapiens. There was a point in time when there were quite a few of them. And the problem became inbreeding and there was a real danger of extinction. They were vulnerable you know they were not on top of the food chain yet. So they had to develop consciousness. Consciousness is what basically saved us from extinction. Without the human consciousness we wouldn't be here. You know that is what made us in the end then superior to the other animals. So how did this happen? You can kind of trace how they moved. You can trace that they went through the central African rainforest and there's one plant there which elephants like and that's iboga and iboga now is like the hot thing of the psychedelic renaissance. Iboga iboga iboga but it's also the oldest drug in the book. Basically they saw that elephants were eating iboga the root and the leaves and suddenly we were like walking backwards and we behaving in an unusual way and then people were also using this and this was going on over like a 100,000 years in the rainforest.

So you can write a story about that you know was it maybe iboga of course you can't prove it you know maybe the frontal cortex grew by itself you know that's a really compelling story that's one of the great mysteries of how did the light turn on