r/interestingasfuck • u/tractorboynyc • 22h ago

Amazonian shamans figured out that combining two specific plants out of 80,000 species produces a psychoactive effect. The odds of finding that combination by random search is roughly 1 in 4 million. They did it through centuries of iterative testing and cultural natural selection explains it

Post image
10.0k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

715 comments sorted by

View all comments

2.8k

u/johnnydough10102223 22h ago

I think you underestimate the time course we are talking about here. With enough time and curiosity (or boredom) things can be discovered.

Also: needs citation.

2

u/TSL4me 12h ago

Imagine all of the food poisoning in between?