Justin Loucks

December 22, 2017

The Mushroom Shamans of Tassili n’Ajjer

In the heart of the African Sahara lies a vast labyrinth of stones upon the plateau

known as Tassili n’Ajjer. Although the inhabitants of this stone forest are no longer,

evidence of their culture is painted all across the landscape. Countless rock paintings

exist here, diverse in style and content, archiving thousands of years of history in this

region of the Sahara Desert. Henri Lhote, the man responsible for cataloguing over 800

rock paintings here, described Tassili n’Ajjer as “the greatest museum of prehistoric art

in the whole world.” (Lhote 12) Certainly, Henri Lhote and his team are responsible for

introducing the world to this great museum, but more recently, interpretations of the art

have influenced new public interest in Tassili n’Ajjer.

In his book, Food of the Gods, Terence McKenna analyzes some of the Tassili

n’Ajjer rock paintings. He asserts that the paintings of Tassili n’Ajjer represent the

earliest known depictions of domesticated cattle, as well as depictions of shamans with

mushrooms. His hypothesis is that Tassili n’Ajjer is an area where Neolithic Saharan

hunter-gatherers developed the domestication of cattle and that this pastoralist

relationship inevitably led to the discovery of dung-loving psychedelic mushrooms that

grew as a result. This interaction between Neolithic peoples and psychoactive

mushrooms influenced the growing complexity of religious beliefs, as illustrated by

some Tassili paintings, according to McKenna. (McKenna 70) The psychedelics

researcher Giorgio Samorini, put forth a similar yet separate hypothesis that artwork at

Tassili n’Ajjer “could indeed reflect the most ancient human culture as yet documented

in which the ritual use of hallucinogenic mushrooms is explicitly represented.” (Samorini

Justin Loucks

December 22, 2017

69) This idea that Tassili n’Ajjer artwork may be a result of psychedelic substances

originated in 1980, from Umberto Sansoni, and evolves through modern time. (Le

Quellec 137)

The rock paintings do demonstrate a progression from hunter-gatherer societies

to ones focused on pastoralism. Very skillfully painted cattle show that these

domesticated animals were a vital part of the cultures of the artists; one painting shows

a herd of no less than sixty-five depicted alongside their herdsmen. (Lhote 199-200)

Compared to other painting styles that did not depict cattle, these cattle paintings are

thought to be more recent, as many of them are superposed upon older paintings.

(Lhote 61) Evidence for psychoactive mushrooms though, is much more difficult to

confirm.

According to McKenna, as well as Samorini, the evidence is shown by certain

paintings of people with mushroom shaped objects decorating their bodies. The figure

of a bee-faced person with geometric markings was documented by both Lhote and an

individual named Jean-Dominique Lajoux, who was part of Lhote’s team in Tassili.

When observed by Lhote, he described the bee-faced figure as having, “plants

(flowers?) which issue from the arms and thighs.” (Lhote 223) According to McKenna

and Samorini, these “flowers” actually represent mushroom fruits. The depiction of the

bee-faced “shaman” differs between Lhote’s illustrations and photographs taken by

Jean-Dominique Lajoux and it is shown that the two shamans are not the same painting

and must have happened in two separate locations in Tassili n’Ajjer. In Lajoux’s, The

Rock Paintings of the Tassili, a much larger number of mushrooms cover the shaman’s
Justin Loucks

December 22, 2017

body and fruits are also grasped in the hands. (Le Quellec 139) Lhote’s illustration only

shows four main mushroom shapes sprouting from the limbs of the shaman, and no

hands or feet. (Lhote 88) Lhote’s shaman is placed on top of a white and unfinished

figure and adjacent to another white figure of a woman, while Lajoux’s photograph has a

painted handprint sitting behind the shaman’s shoulder. Lajoux’s photographs show

another interesting scene; a group of figures with mushroom shaped heads dancing or

running among curious geometric patterns and each holding mushroom shaped objects,

with a clear fungiform object sprouting from the ground. (Le Quellec 139) This pictorial

evidence inspired and supported McKenna’s and Samorini’s hypotheses that

psychoactive mushrooms directly influenced the ancient cultures of the Sahara.

An important idea to consider, one assertively put forth by Jean-Loïc Le Quellec

in his writing “Shamans and Martians: The Same Struggle!”, is that the interpretation of

prehistoric rock art is largely subjective. He explains how without concrete evidence,

hermeneutics “let their unbridled imaginations take over.” (Le Quellec 135) As an

example, the same paintings that certainly represented mushrooms for McKenna and

Samorini are interpreted as species of convolvulaceae (morning-glories) by another

researcher, Ferdinando Fagnola. (Le Quellec 138) Alternatively, Erich von Däniken

uses Tassili n’Ajjer artwork to support his theory concerning ancient extraterrestrials,

while Le Quellec himself safely attributes it to depictions of native mythology.

In conclusion, no concrete determination can be made about the existence of

psychoactive mushrooms in the Sahara without further archaeological evidence.

Artifacts can be interpreted in a multitude of ways and researchers can have

Justin Loucks

December 22, 2017

preconceptions and bias in their research. It may be impossible to definitively prove the

existence of psychoactive mushrooms at Tassili n’Ajjer without a preserved specimen;

and although it may seem obvious that psychoactive mushrooms have profound and

mind-altering capabilities, it would be very difficult to demonstrate how these

mushrooms may have influenced the religions and beliefs of native populations.

Perhaps new evidence will be unearthed in our future.

References

Le Quellec, Jean-Loïc. “Shamans and Martians: The Same Struggle!” The Concept of

Shamanism: Uses and Abuses 2001: 135-159.

[https://www.academia.edu/3577737/Shamans_and_Martians_the_same_struggl

e]

Lhote, Henri. The Search for the Tassili Frescoes. New York: E.P. Dutton & Co.,

Inc.,

1959. Print.

McKenna, Terence. Food of the Gods. New York: Bantam Books, 1992. Print.

Samorini, Giorgio. “The Oldest Representations of Hallucinogenic Mushrooms in

the World (Sahara Desert, 9000-7000 B.P.” Integration, no. 2 & 3: 69-78. 1992.

[http://www.samorini.it/doc1/sam/sam-1992-sahara.pdf]
Justin Loucks

December 22, 2017