How did we ever figure out that aspens and willows have aspirin analogs in their bark? Boredom? Starvation food?
Psychedelic mushrooms make sense. You see it, you eat it. Willow bark tea is a whole process.
Psychedelic mushrooms make sense. You see it, you eat it. Willow bark tea is a whole process.
Also, if you're in constant pain you'll try all kinds of random stuff to make the pain go away. If necessity is the mother of invention then desperation is its father.
History of the World in Six Glasses claims that tea and coffee more or less caused the enlightenment. One, it stopped day drinking by the intellectual class. And two, they were foil for socialization.
Hey, all the bugs that are eating that plant are dying. Let's see what happens if we smoke it.
For mushrooms it was probably desperation, but my head cannon for mushrooms is Trial by Mushroom: You can be expelled from our community for stealing, or you can eat this mushroom and if you survive, you get to stay.
There are a couple varieties of tea that are actually fermented, but for most teas it's a misnomer. You aren't causing fermentation, just autolysis (latin: self digestion), which is more akin to the malting phase of beer production. Black tea is left to process longer, while green tea is interrupted sooner. The switch is turned on by bruising the leaves, and off by desiccating them.
From a caterpillar's perspective, a tea leaf is booby trapped. Waiting for mandibles to mix the ingredients and create the insecticide.