http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/1819615
I hope the symbiosis and sponge comments are you just being glib. Why just early man? Because science has taught us how fire, lightning, wind etc.work. We no longer have to think of them as divine, we can just accept their beauty.
Sponges, yes, we appear to have evolved from sponges. We see symbiosis in plant and animal species, for instance bees and flowers, but more complex relationships where a bug is able to
simply carry the plant and we see the two as inseparable. "Peterson (1913) has found that the chlorophyll which passes into the intestine of certain red caterpillars is modified into a red substance (vanessa red), which is later absorbed and transported to the epithelium, where it is deposited and becomes the pigment of the wings and of the other body-parts."
Or like the aphids in the link above.
Think of a hermit crab where the outer rock walls transform into the body and the crab transforms into an organ, the brain. Go back eons to the first brain of our ancestors, a symbiotic ying and yang of one body one mind.
I do not think of anything as divine but certainly would not label nature "explained" and it is much greater than we realize, we are not in control of things. That does not necessarily make me want to grovel in front of some marble statue, but I do have to humble myself to my own nature. I can only ask to be alive and millions of tiny creatures in my microbiome see to that task. I would likewise die without the sun to warm by body and conduct chemical changes through my skin; I must grovel beneath it once in a while.
^What?
How would this even work? How could a getting psychoactive affects from a psychedelic have helped the survival of our species (or ancestor) in any way?
Because things we consider to be common safe food were likely poisonous to us in the past, garlic, rhubarb, grapes (poisonous to dogs). That could have happened by luck, as in poison ivy, or it could have been we were forced to survive by eating these, as in European's immunity to smallpox which killed off Native Americans which came from livestock (domesticated animals).
Now we still carry smallpox and other parasites and diseases which then become part of our microbiome.
It is necessary to consider our mind is a maze of complex tasks.Those tasks was originated because of outside influences of nature. Fear of spiders. The spiders evolved that into us. Our reactions to different colors, seeing red (blood) versus seeing green (healthy land). But these are external sources of evolution, it may very well be an internal source, perhaps alcohol changes a function of the mind to our benefit, giving us adrenaline surges, and so we just incorporate it permanently into our system. Copy it and use it. I can not really explain the process, but you get the idea. Alcohol is not only a poison, but beer was also a source of clean water and so it is a natural consequence that we drank lots of beer; it aided in our survival. We likewise would have eaten lots of poisons and may even be predisposed now to enjoy some degree of poisoning because it expands our survival retinue.