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Comment by misja111 | Hacker News Reader

I bet there is some mushroom species in Europe as well that contains that substance. All those stories about dwarfs, trolls etc. and especially in woody area's, they must have come from somewhere.

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Not sure about the exact same active substance, but Amanita muscaria is the obvious candidate. It's also commonly shown as part of the imagery in stories involving tiny people: the Smurfs, Super Mario (it's the power-up that makes Mario bigger/smaller), Fantasia, Alice in Wonderland, and so on.

Amanita muscaria is iconic because it's the shroomiest looking shroom that ever shroomed, but by all accounts A. muscaria intoxication is not particularly pleasant:

> effects can range from mild nausea and twitching to drowsiness, cholinergic crisis-like effects (low blood pressure, sweating and salivation), auditory and visual distortions, mood changes, euphoria, relaxation, ataxia, and loss of equilibrium (like with tetanus)

> In cases of serious poisoning the mushroom causes delirium, somewhat similar in effect to anticholinergic poisoning (such as that caused by Datura stramonium), characterised by bouts of marked agitation with confusion, hallucinations, and irritability followed by periods of central nervous system depression. Seizures and coma may also occur in severe poisonings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanita_muscaria#Symptoms

But it has been used for ritual purposes.

In Russia, it's instantly recognizable as a poisonous mushroom - it's a symbol of "danger" that's as obvious as a skull-and-crossbones. Here, in America, most people I've talked to don't even know what it is.

Depends on how is prepared. If you heat it and prep it the right away it makes a fantastic sleep med. If you don't prep it right you get delirious and people can hurt themselves. You also can't take too much or that can also become delerious. I think that's why it never caught on even though it's far more effective than any other over the counter sleep inducing herb or supplement(in my experience)

It's quite beautiful, but also a bit scary that it can pop up all over urban areas on the west coast of Canada/U.S in Autumn, as well as in the forest. I'm not sure if it's common enough knowledge for people to teach their kids not to mess with them.

There's some variety of little people myth in most cultures. There's also giant myths in most and there's no mushroom for that.

I think those kinds of myths are just natural progressions of exaggerations and oral storytelling

> there's no mushroom for that.

There is actually quite a large body of research, going back as far as the earliest scientific literature on psilocybin (and LSD), about this exact thing.

Useful keywords: microsomatognosia/macrosomatognosia (feeling one's own body shrink/grow), Alice in Wonderland syndrome (AIWS), and Lilliputian/Brobdingnagian hallucinations (seeing tiny people or giants).

Besides which, if you ever are so lucky as to try a significant dose of mushrooms, you will probably see for yourself that you've been underestimating their significance in our cultural traditions.

Folklore’s roots go deeper than a single species.

Swedish tradition has it that trolls would replace human babies with their own babies. It does not take a long leap of imagination to to see how this could be used as an excuse for the practice of putting unwanted/deformed babies out into the forest ”for the wolves”. (Disclaimer: I don’t know how common that practice might have been, since it would presumably stem from prehistoric times)

The question is could that possibly relate to Neanderthals or Denisovans co-exisiting with homo sapiens.

Not in Sweden, as far as science knows. It’s a more likely explanation than orangutans, but not by much.

Nobody lived in Sweden at that time.

Since dwarfs (little people) actually exist, I don't think we need to reach into psychedelics for an explanation.

The hallucinations here involve not dwarfs, but tiny people only a few inches tall.

I was replying to the references to the canon of Western mythology around dwarves and the like.

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