More on the Mystery of the Original Human Culture: psychoactive Gwa berries, no evidence of homosexuality, genetic anomalies

So here's some attempt to identify the possibly psychoactive plants -- like Gwa berries -- used by the Bushmen for inducing trance healing



Graham Hancock argues that modern humans were essentially created by psychedelic plants -- probably from DMT increase. He says this occurred -- symbolic communication in humans -- more recently than 40,000 years ago.

Hancock says

really less than 40,000 years ago

Actually this is not accurate anymore! It's also misleading.

Hancock also states:

And this great change has been defined as the single most important step forward in the evolution of human behavior is intimately associated with the emergence of the great and transcendent rock and cave art all over the world.

Again this is misleading! The Bushmen have cave art from 70,000 BCE yet European cave art is some thirty thousand years later!!!

The Tsodilo Hills are sometimes called the Louvre of Africa with their 4000 rock paintings, but the crude statue of a python is what captures many people’s imaginations.

The Tsodilo Hills are very important to the local Bushmen or San. They are called the “Mountains of the Gods” or “the Rocks that whisper”. There is small cave on the northern side of the hills that is known as the Python Cave and this contains a rock that resembles a giant python, and there is evidence that the San were worshipping the Python around 70,000 years ago.

Hello? Complex symbolic communication much older than any cave art in Europe so it's not some "single most important step forward"

Step Forward implies evolutionary progress in a linear manner. We're talking closeted eurocentric racism going on.

I've been discussing the Bushmen healing culture over on thetaobums in a thread started on homophobia, racism, sexism, etc. I said - well there's no evidence of homosexuality in the original human culture and they are the most genetically diverse humans, the origin of modern humans.

So people challenged my quotes from Elizabeth Marshall Thomas -- the quotes stating "Homosexuality is not permitted" and Homosexuality is unknown.

So then I sent the quotes to Elizabeth Marshall Thomas - who goes by Liz Thomas -- and she responded very immediately. I had asked her if I could post her comments online but then she said in her third response to me that the only comment she wanted posted online is the following:

There’s no way I could say that the Bushmen did or did not have homosexuality because I didn’t know all of them—all I can say is that among the people we knew, homosexuality was not evident. But that could be true of any given population.

So this someone contradicts her earlier comment -- which I had to remind her of - she said she did not remember making it - and so I sent her the book quote link: Homosexuality is not permitted either;

So clearly Liz Thomas has clarified her views to say the least. I then emailed Professor Richard B. Lee asking him to comment as in 1968 he did a study of over 100 Bushmen males on their marriage status -- none of them were homosexual. I had discovered this research in this article on the Bushmen and marriage

So considering how strict the Bushmen culture was regarding male-female energy dynamics pervading all of reality - much like Taoist philosophy or Pythagorean philosophy -- I still find it difficult to think there was homosexuality hidden somewhere among the Bushmen.

O.K. I emailed Richard B. Lee again and no response so then I searched his book and sure enough he has info on homosexuality!!

A few adult men and women have experimented with same-sex sexual partners, with male homosexuality being the more common. Of the two women and six men reported to have homosexual experiences, all were married, indicating that all were bisexual. Ju'/hoan nonparticipants in these activities expressed attitudes of curiousity and bemusement toward them rather than embarrassment and hostility.

Lee, Richard B. The Dobe Ju/'hoansi, p. 98. So not full-fledged homosexuality.

Also Liz Thomas has stated her new book coming out this spring addresses the Harvard Group, of which Richard Lee is part of, dismissing her anthropology work -- this is due to significant differences due to the Harvard Group in the 1960s studying Bushmen with more Bantu interactions compared to the Bushmen that Liz Thomas lived with in the 1950s. I'm not saying that this "experiment" with homosexuality was due to the interaction with the Bantu who do practice homosexuality -- but I think it's a fair angle to consider. Indeed I have researched this and the Dobe Bushmen that Richard Lee studied have been documented to be strongly affected by the Bantu cultures which have homosexuality -- one study even included "male preferences" in this. Another study noted that prominent Dobe Bushmen male healers had polygyny (more than one wife) but that this was probably from the Bantu culture.

Born homoeroticism among the Bushmen I cannot recall.

Boy-Wives and Female-Husbands: Studies in African-American Homosexualities

I guess my point is that if the original human culture has no genetic homosexuality and it is the basis for all other humans and also the main focus of the culture is shamanic paranormal love healing energy - which later became qigong, kundalini, etc. then it seems to me that people practicing this shamanic healing yet not wanting to have to do with homosexuals might not be homophobia.

Granted in the context of larger modern society it certainly is homophobia but then male celibacy in the modern world is considered even less of an option than homosexuality.

I think it would be safer to say the Bushmen are genetically predisposed to male celibacy training than to homosexuality.

Yet is any scientist claiming that paranormal healing energy is genetically predisposed? Maybe a few parapsychologists have investigated this but it's definintely not a subject commented upon by scientists in general - as is the case of homosexuality.

The author of that book on homosexuality in Africa went around looking for homoerotic behavior - in the modern context - definitely not "pre-contact" Bushmen culture. haha. Yet the author, despite being deeply entrenched in homosexuality mentalities - I literally had to look up three words over two sentences and all three words had next to no common definitions in English -- the author admits that no Bushmen could be found to be "born" as homoerotic. So it seems to fall into the modernized experimentation phase.

I'm not referring to female orgasm here because the male ejaculation triggers the stress sympathetic nervous system which is why it's the opposite of the Bushmen male shamanic paranormal culture. Female orgasm stays in the parasympathetic relaxation nervous system and in fact the males have to learn to activate this vagus nerve kundalini female energy internally that is orgasmic -- Dr. Bradford Keeney calls it an impersonal eroticism but not based on sex.

So then someone posted this fascinating article on Bushmen genetics

The person argued that this research shows the Bushmen indeed have most new genetic traits than the modern humans that evolved from the Bushmen -- and so logically it would be inferred that homosexuality would be one of those genetic traits. I responded that just because the traits are different doesn't mean they are less ancient, as the article supposes -- and I cited Professor Jeffrey Schwartz to back up this claim. So then I emailed Schwartz, sending him the article, and asking him if I was correct. He said yes I was and that he finds these "studies" to be "absolutely science fiction." He says they just are bench biochemists without understanding developmental genetics and systematics.

O.K. so the cards were falling so to speak on the Bushmen house



Bradford Keeney never needed any psychedelic drugs to induce his Ostrich Egg experience which the Bushmen consider the sign of being a master healer -- fully opening the third eye. Keeney mentions the psychedelic plant in his book Ropes to God -- but says it's for the females. Richard Katz hypothesizes it may have been used more in ancient times I think. So I referenced it in my earlier blog entry as a review of Keeney's Ropes to God book

The females also have their day as master healers in this book - their role of singing next to the fire imparts energy into the males but as master healers the females are more powerful than the fire. The master female healers indeed dance differently -- standing in place - bouncing - to signify like the !gwah plant root used medicinally to activate trance for the females (and some males) -- the root also held in place under the ground.

!Gwa berries So that's a different spelling. I'm kind of surprised to think that berries would be DMT sources? hmm... but I guess it's a root not a berry.

Yeah I'm shocked some ethnobotantist has not cracked the code of the Gwa berries!!! googlebooks has a great except from Katz' book, describing the use of Gwa to activate the n/om boiling heat kundalini energy

But gwa is neither necessary nor a sufficient ingredient in learning to kia or heal.

Well I guess it's a wrap folks! Graham Hancock is plain out wrong!!

Richard G. Klein, a paleoanthropologist at Stanford University, said in an e-mail from South Africa that the new evidence “supports my view that fully modern hunter-gatherers emerged in Africa abruptly around 50,000 years ago, and I remain convinced that the behavior shift, or advance, underlies the successful expansion of modern Africans to Eurasia.”

So the evidence if very clear now - maybe Grahman Hancock missed this NY Times article this year

We know the genetic evidence shows the Bushmen having many unusual traits, thus far undefined.

Yet science has yet to identify the active chemicals in the plants the Bushmen used for entering trance. It seems like critical information to me.

I'm someone who also entered trance by relying on transmissions from an energy master who never used psychoactive plants to enter trance. So we can say safely it's possible the Bushmen never needed psychoactive plants to enter the trance state and we know the culture of the Bushmen is based on an understanding of energy from the N/om as belly boiling heat -- exactly in line with the kundalini and qigong traditions of India and China - both not relying on psychoactive plants. Sure psychedelics were used by shamans in both India and China but still were not the basis for the shamanic healing energy created -- just supplements and tools.

So I'm still amazed -- I mean obviously taking DMT in the Amazon is an amazing life-changing experience but still what about all the traditions of energy training based on celibacy and how this originated with the Bushmen?!!

Graham Hancock is talking about the origin of humanity and yet has only briefly mentioned some of the cave paintings of the Bushmen -- no real discussion of how they create N/om energy even though this is well documented.

But then Hancock is admitting to just overcoming a 25 year cannabis addiction and so possibly he was too stilted to really pursue the topic thoroughly despite broadly promoting a psychedelic origin of modern humanity view on the counterculture scene. I suppose if it worked for Terrance then it makes sense someone else would pick up the torch. haha.



I forgot how my friend was mentioning the rain dance as an example of tribal control of Nature yet here she is saying the opposite. haha.

O.K. moving right along -- I am reading this review on the evolution of mothering and it focuses -- rightly so - on the original human culture, the Bushmen:

This becomes clearer with careful measurement. Ann Cale Kruger, a developmental psychologist who analyzed !Kung responses to crying, found that in timed, coded behavioral observations someone other than the mother helped respond to a baby’s cry in most cases.13 Even the longest crying bouts, those over thirty seconds (!Kung infants aren’t left to cry very long), evoked a nonmaternal effort half the time. However, she also found that the number of longer bouts of crying in which the mother was not involved was zero. These findings confirmed that although mothers are not alone in meeting the challenges of baby care, they can have a uniquely important role.

Now this is truly amazing.

Modern motherhood has a term called "self-soothing" and this means teaching the baby to fall asleep by itself and usually self-soothing is taught by allowing the baby to cry as long as it takes to fall asleep on its own.

Now living with a 11 month old baby -- it's an issue I've delved into and I've read some long discussions on self-soothing - did the baby really learn to fall asleep on its own by being left to cry so long? Did it -- overall cut down on crying time rather than picking up the baby from the crib everytime it wakes up crying -- or just giving the baby a bottle in the crib when the baby cries -- i.e. actually soothing the baby instead of leaving it to fend for itself.

The concept of self-soothing is primarily to allow the mother to get more sleep at night and then I read how the French let their baby cry for something like five minutes before they go to soothe the baby. Anything less is considered spoiling the baby.

My concern was long-term brain damage to the neurons by letting a baby cry so long. Then I read that a baby does not establish a fixed sleeping habit until 16 months old and so it's not a big deal for the baby not to learn to "self-soothe" before 16 months old.

Anyway -- obviously the original human culture for 90% of human history -- did not let their babies cry for long periods of time. To me it is just intuitively the right thing to do. It pains the heart to let a baby cry on their own. But modern culture considers it part of the baby's maturity to learn to fend for itself. haha. I think just this very early ritualization -- body emotional amor - as Reich would state -- is very insightful.