Joe Rogan Explains the Stoned Ape Theory to Reggie Watts

I wonder who the first fucking monkey was to figure out how to skin an animal and wear its skin. You know how to be like in the monkey days, right? No, it feels like it'd be a couple generations away from the monkey. Maybe. Don't you think? Maybe it was one... I just can't imagine a monkey doing that. One mean motherfucking chimp and they were going north and there was one dude who always annoyed him. So he kills him with a rock and then uses the rock to take his fucking skin off and wears it to freak everybody else out. But then he realizes it makes him warm and he can go a little further north. Uh huh. It's like a movie. Okay. I like it. Can you see that scene? I can see that that that's like that's what the entire movie leads up to. I wonder when the first monkey figured out he could kill an animal with like a tool. Like the first like Australia Pythicus or one of those primitive humans. When the first one was that stabbed something like a stab at a rat or a rabbit with a stick and went holy shit. Right. I can just use this tool. Yeah. What other tools can I make? I'm gonna start eating. Yeah. I'm gonna eat good. Because if you didn't have a weapon, how hard is it for a person to kill something with your hands? What are you even gonna get? What are you gonna catch? What the fuck can you catch with your hands? Well... You can't catch a squirrel. You'd be... Just your hands. No tools. You'd be hunting and gathering mostly. I mean, I mean gathering I would say. Yeah. You'd be eating shit that you found on the ground. Yeah. That's primarily what you would eat. And then once in a while you'd get something an animal. But but yeah, but then they had yeah, you're right. They obviously had to figure out different ways of getting animals. Well, it's one of the shifts that they think took place that allowed the human brain size to double over a period of two million years. Oh, really? So the human brain size apparently I was listening to a Terrence McKenna lecture on this once. And he was talking about all the human brain size doubled over the period of two million years. It's one of the biggest mysteries in the fossil record. And his idea was that they discovered mushrooms and that the chimps over this period of time with the monkey people, whatever the fuck there were, ancient hominids. Yeah. Had discovered mushrooms after the climate had shifted and he backs it up. He did back it up. At least he's dead now. He backed it up with some climate data that we know from, you know, core samples and stuff like that. He thinks that they experienced climate change where the rainforest had receded in the grasslands and that this gave birth to the rise of undulates like cows and deer and things like that. And they would shit these mushrooms would grow on their shit. And then they've observed a lot of these monkeys in the wild picking up cow patties and looking for grubs and beetles underneath it. Oh, I see. And they think they might have experimented with the mushrooms. And then if they experimented with psilocybin mushrooms, a lot of things could take place once they realized that it was not just a viable food source, but also provided them with a bunch of different benefits. One being their vision and increases visual acuity. I know. It's so weird. Especially in low doses. It's true. Yeah. So it would make them see things better. Two, it makes them hornier. It makes them more communal and it makes them more creative. And all those things possibly could have given birth to the language and to a lot of other things. They also think it's possible that that creativity could have enabled them to start hunting. They started using tools and thinking and trying to figure out ways around stuff and trying to, you know, try to figure out how to make an effective weapon to kill something in a distance. Like the more they're thinking and becoming creative, the more that stuff's enhancing them. And this period of two million years is like a pretty profound jump for the human brain size. They think some of that also came to do with our desire to kill things with weapons. But once we started hunting and eating meat, we got way more protein, more bioavailable protein. It was healthier for the animal, for the human animal. And then we also started to try to figure out other better ways to kill these animals, which made us even more creative and competitive. Yeah. And they think that all these factors might have taken place that turned us into a person. That's pretty amazing. Two million years. Yeah, it's just like a deviation. Well, you know, it's even crazier. 65 million years ago, we were like a mole. Oh, yeah. People were like a little shrew. That's our ancestor. That's right. Remember that. What's the name of that thing? I think it's the North. I think it's the North. What did this? I think you're right. Say it again. The North. It was like a weird little mole. That's what it is. Yeah, it's a little tiny rodent. Yeah, because I did a podcast right now. I toured with. What is it, Jamie? Oh, there it is. The Arius of what is that word? Euthyrian mammals was a small rat-like creature depicted in this illustration that lived 145 million years ago in the shadow of the dinosaurs. So that rat-like creature apparently survived the asteroid impact. I don't think that's the thing, though. There's another. There's a formal name for it. I know because I was on a podcast and they were one of the segments of it. They talked about this thing. But the only reason why I'm skeptical is because it says 145 million years ago, but I guess maybe they survived the impact. Scroll back up to the top of the title, says, These rodent-like creatures are the earliest known ancestors of humans, whales, and truths. Oh, okay. That's what's even more crazy. We used to be a whale. Or our ancestors, we shared a common ancestor, I should say. Yeah, we went into the sea and then stayed on land. That thing, that fucking rat became a whale. What? Maybe that's it. Euthyria, there it is. Okay. That turned into a person, folks. Think about that when you're setting your rat traps. I know. A hundred million years from now, rats might be some super superior human form. I think that's very possible. But I mean, I get why Christians are skeptical now. I'm like, what do you – show me your work. God made this. I was not a rat. I was not a rat, sir. I'm not a rat.