I'd agree that humans (and other animals) have likely been consuming things for psychoactive effect as far back as such substances could be found... but a wee bit of consumption doesn't invalidate Kanazawa's point. We've gotten a lot better at collecting, cultivating, creating, and consuming psychoactives, in evolutionarily-recent history.
Europeans had to learn about tobacco from the new world. Tobacco's been bred to be stronger since the introduction of agriculture... just as our cultivated fruits are far sweeter than their natural precursors.
Evidence of alcoholic fermentation goes back perhaps 10K years (skimming Wikipedia). But even if the practice is quite a bit older, it's still 'evolutionarily recent'. Our primate ancestors might have happened across some fermented juice occasionally... they couldn't pick up a six-pack at the Kwik-E-Mart every night.
Finding and consuming exactly the right mushroom/cactus alkaloid for creating visions, and not the other ones that kill you, has become a lot easier with literate traditions. And pills made in chemistry labs.
What was a trickle of opportunities among our primate forebears – a level they would have presumably adapted for – is now a torrent. Kanazawa's point here seems sound in the broad-generalizing sense in which it was offered.
Finding and consuming exactly the right mushroom or cactus is actually not a problem in traditional societies. They're pretty good at the gathering part of 'hunting and gathering'. The big difference with modern society is that psychoactive substances were much more likely to be treated as sacraments for religious ceremonies rather than something you consume at a rock concert or while watching the Superbowl
I'd agree that humans (and other animals) have likely been consuming things for psychoactive effect as far back as such substances could be found... but a wee bit of consumption doesn't invalidate Kanazawa's point. We've gotten a lot better at collecting, cultivating, creating, and consuming psychoactives, in evolutionarily-recent history.
Europeans had to learn about tobacco from the new world. Tobacco's been bred to be stronger since the introduction of agriculture... just as our cultivated fruits are far sweeter than their natural precursors.
Evidence of alcoholic fermentation goes back perhaps 10K years (skimming Wikipedia). But even if the practice is quite a bit older, it's still 'evolutionarily recent'. Our primate ancestors might have happened across some fermented juice occasionally... they couldn't pick up a six-pack at the Kwik-E-Mart every night.
Finding and consuming exactly the right mushroom/cactus alkaloid for creating visions, and not the other ones that kill you, has become a lot easier with literate traditions. And pills made in chemistry labs.
What was a trickle of opportunities among our primate forebears – a level they would have presumably adapted for – is now a torrent. Kanazawa's point here seems sound in the broad-generalizing sense in which it was offered.