El Micelio — The Simbiosis Blog
Historia y Etnomicología
Aspergillus oryzae, domesticated from a toxic relative two thousand years ago, is the biological basis of sake and soy sauce — and since 2006 the official national fungus of Japan.
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Koji: The domesticated fungus that became Japan's national fungus
Historia y Etnomicología
A parasitic fungus of Himalayan caterpillars became the economic mainstay of rural Tibetan families, providing up to 90% of their annual cash income.
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Yartsa gunbu: the Himalayan fungus worth more than gold
Historia y Etnomicología
More than one hundred mushroom-shaped stone sculptures, some almost three thousand years old, document a possible Maya and pre-Classic ritual cult—though their exact interpretation remains debated.
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Mayan Mushroom Stones: The enigma carved in stone three thousand years ago
Historia y Etnomicología
The Wassons formalized in 1957 the distinction between mycophilic and mycophobic cultures—a concept that current science shows to be much more complex than a simple black and white.
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Mycophilia vs. mycophobia: the concept invented by the Wasson couple
Historia y Etnomicología
St. Anthony's Fire, which terrorized Europe for centuries, was actually ergotism: poisoning by a parasitic fungus of rye, Claviceps purpurea.
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Ergotism and St. Anthony's Fire: When a Fungus Terrorized Europe
Historia y Etnomicología
Two prehistoric murals—one in the Algerian Sahara, the other in Cuenca, Spain—could depict sacred fungi, but only one has robust scientific evidence.
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Fungal Rock Art: What Tassili and Selva Pascuala Really Prove
Historia y Etnomicología
Robert Gordon Wasson proposed that the sacred soma of the Rigveda was in fact Amanita muscaria — a hypothesis that remains debated more than five decades later.
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Amanita muscaria and Vedic Soma: The Enigma Wasson Never Fully Solved
Historia y Etnomicología
In 1955, Mazatec healer María Sabina shared her sacred ritual with an American banker — and the publication of their encounter in Life magazine transformed her life and the town of Huautla forever.
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María Sabina and Huautla: the all-night vigil that made it into Life magazine
Historia y Etnomicología
Sahagún documented a sacred Nahuatl mushroom in the 16th century that science took four centuries to begin to identify correctly—and whose exact identity is still debated.
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Teonanácatl and the Codices: The Sacred Mushroom Sahagún Couldn't Name
Historia y Etnomicología
The Iceman of the Alps carried two species of fungi with him five thousand years ago: one for lighting fires, the other possibly as medicine.
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Ötzi and Tinder: The Fungal Baggage of a 5,000-Year-Old Man
Historia y Etnomicología
Agarikon (Fomitopsis officinalis), called the mushroom of life by the Greeks, can live for more than seventy years and is studied today for its antimicrobial chemistry.
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Agarikon: the world's longest-living mushroom and its antimicrobial memory
Historia y Etnomicología
The red mushroom with white spots in fairy tales. The teonanácatl of the Mexica. The soma of the Vedas. The dead fly in Russian wine. The Reishi of the Buddhist monk. Across cultures and millennia, the mushroom has been a vehicle for the sacred — a symbol that crosses borders between worlds.
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Fungal Syncretisms: When Fungi Crossed Borders Between Worlds