The invisible fungi that helped build human civilization
In short: For decades, archaeologists assumed prehistoric humans lived on a diet of only meat and plants because mushrooms rot too fast to leave fossils. New technology is finally revealing a hidden kingdom: fungi that fed, healed, and even provided the social glue for our earliest farming communities.
Because fungi are mostly water, they rarely survive in the archaeological record. It was only recently that scientists developed tools to identify fungal DNA and micro-residues in prehistoric mouths, utensils, and clothing. These breakthroughs are shifting our understanding of early human life, proving that mushrooms were a significant part of the human story for millennia.
Recent discoveries highlight how fungi served practical roles beyond nutrition. In a Yorkshire peat bog, 11,000-year-old polypores were found perfectly preserved; these were intentionally scorched by Mesolithic hunter-gatherers to serve as portable tinder. Furthermore, analysis of Palaeolithic dental plaque from 2017 revealed that Neanderthals in Belgium and Spain consumed specific varieties like gray shag and split gill mushrooms.
The relationship between humans and fungi even extended to medicine. One Spanish individual living around 48,000 years ago appears to have deliberately chewed on grasses colonized by penicillin molds to treat a painful dental abscess. Beyond survival, researchers at Stanford University suggest these fungal connections helped early Neolithic communities develop deeper understandings of their land and social structures, essentially acting as a foundation for modern civilization.
Today, human mastery over mushrooms follows two distinct paths: genetic manipulation and environmental curation. While white button mushrooms became a global staple in 1925 due to a specific mutation, other species like shiitake are cultivated by mastering growth conditions rather than changing the fungus itself. Meanwhile, high-value items like truffles remain risky because they require complex symbiotic relationships with living trees.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: How Did Humans Domesticate Mushrooms?
- Also: How our ancestors used mushrooms to change the course of human history | New Scientist
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