Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

Many believe that our Neolithic/Bronze Age ancestors had a serious 'religious' aspect to their lives and were seriously guided by it on a day to day basis. I don't doubt it personally and have said many times that I felt they possibly lived their lives in the hope of entering the Afterlife once their earthly journey was over. Now, if true, do you think it was a natural 'built-in' belief or induced into them at some time during the Neolithic or whenever?

I still live like this now!! I also believe that the soul can past from one body to another at death or maybe even before [ like the romans said the druids did ] , i have always had an obsession with the stars and the movement of the planets, also the belief in entering the afterlife [good and bad] is the root of all todays shitty religions, the hope of going somewhere good if you are good is one hell of a control system that has been in place for a long long time, so may be "built in" to good people, All these things were in me from my first memories [ they weren't taught to me in this life ], so could be built in or induced at some point in a past life, i think the answer is a little bit of both, and never discount hallucinogens [ eg magic mushrooms ] because they make non initiated people suddenly see things very differently [ during and forever afterwards], so massive brews of mushrooms in the neolithic is probably the real answer, and there is some proof of this in the beaker from balfarg henge, as when the leftover substance was tested it had various hallucinogens in the beaker, so it's safe to say that if anyone drank it, it would have been [ and seen to be ] very mind altering, and remember this was the first mind altering drink, a long time before alcohol, and we all know how popular that became!!!!

the suggestion was it may have had traces of black henbane and that claim was refuted 12 years ago in the JAS .

All my beliefs were there in this life long before any mushrooms or anything else, i was saying that i think a lot of ancient knowledge came from mushrooms.

Can you give the correct reference to this please? I was at Balfarg last week & read in PSAS 123 “the identification of quantities of Solanaceae pollen and Hyoscyamus niger (black henbane) seeds encrusted on one of the Grooved Ware vessels”. If you could forward some info showing this as a mistkae I'd greatly appreciate it.

Thanks - Stag