The Cosmic Serpent, DNA and the Origins of Knowledge

by Jeremy Narby

Whilst living amongst Peruvian Indians, anthropologist Jeremy Narby learned of their phenomenal knowledge of plants and biochemical interactions, gained under the influence of the hallucinogen ayahuasca. Despite his initial scepticism, Narby found himself engaged in an increasingly obsessive quest. He researched cutting-edge scholarship in subjects as diverse as molecular biology, shamanism, neurology and mythology, which led him inexorably to the conclusion that the Indians' claims were literally to a consciousness prepared with drugs, biochemical knowledge could indeed be transmitted, through DNA itself.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Anthropology, Spirituality, Philosophy, History, Psychology

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Jeremy Narby is an anthropologist and writer. Narby grew up in Canada and Switzerland, studied history at the University of Canterbury, and received a doctorate in anthropology from Stanford University. Narby spent several years living with the Ashaninca in the Peruvian Amazon cataloging indigenous uses of rainforest resources to help combat ecological destruction. Narby has written multiple books, as well as sponsored an expedition to the rainforest for biologists and other scientists to examine indigenous knowledge systems and the utility of Ayahuasca in gaining knowledge. Since 1989, Narby has been working as the Amazonian projects director for the Swiss NGO, Nouvelle Planète.- wiki

Reviews

[D.M. Kenyon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jeremy Narby's Cosmic Serpent is a densely academic book that is 50% footnotes. This not light reading, but on the other hand it is essential reading. Narby's premise is that hallucinogenic drugs used by shaman in the Western Amazon actually give them access to medicinal information through knowledge coded in DNA. This would be a rather bizarre premise except for the fact that Narby is a trained PhD. in anthropology and his work is based an extensive survey of academic materials across numerous disciplines.

His journey starts with his experience in the Western Amazon basin where he was invited to try powerful hallucinogen called "ayahuasca". This compound, by itself is mystifying because it is made through a complex chemical process that one would not expect would be within the reach of native Amazonian chemistry. And yet, ayahuasca is used throughout the Amazon rain forest as an access to a hallucinatory world where images of spirits inform shaman how to use the hidden power of the plant life in the Amazon rain forest cure a very broad spectrum of disease. Only in the past decades have pharmaceutical companies invade the province of these shaman to start mining for botanical compounds to patent and basically steal from the indigenous population.

More than an anthropological account of how shaman use hallucination to find cures for disease, The Cosmic Serpent is a challenge to Western rationalism and modern science. Narby calls into serious question the limits of the scientific process and how we come to know things int he industrialized world. His argument is actually quite convincing as he punches holes in rational constructive thinking and makes the case for completely different and more intuitive platform of knowledge.

While many in the scientific world have scoffed at his theories, Jeremy Narby has succeeded at least in throwing a monkey wrench in the the more-myth-than-truth paradigm of science and has opened the door for inquiry into what may prove to be the future of human knowledge.

[Paperclippe · Rating 3 out of 5]

I... have no idea what I just read.

I'm not sure if this is one of those cases of, "When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail," or something entirely different, but either this guy is really onto something here, or he's a complete and utter banana sandwich.

For the first half of the book, I was strongly in the former camp. For the second half, I began to slowly drown in the latter.

This is the first audiobook where I want to keep a review short because I don't want to post spoilers. I also want to keep it short because I'm not entirely sure what to say.

Ah... so... yeah.

DNA is an actual vector through the electromagnetic fields of which human beings and other animals receive instructions about how to interact with their world.

Except literally.

That's... that's all I got.

I mean, read it. It's quick. But make sure you've got your tinfoil hat ready.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

For anyone interested in DNA, shamanism and the origins of life and knowledge, this book is a must-read. The author attempts to establish connections between modern science's biomolecular understanding of DNA and the knowledge imparted on shaman by their ayahuasca-induced hallucinations. Intrigued? Open your mind and read on. You won't be disappointed.

[Jonathanstray Stray · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is an astonishing example of delusional thinking and exceptionally insane reasoning. Seriously. "This ancient carving is X-shaped, they must have been drawing chromosomes during mitosis!"

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the story of an excellent thought experiment, and for this reason I have learned much. However, as a geneticist researcher myself, I have to say that Narby is an excellent anthropologist but a dirt poor biologist. His hypothesis is falsifiable and is therefore "scientific" but it is a poor hypothesis rooted in metaphor. I realize this was published two decades ago and the study of biology doesn't stand still, so evidence used by Narby (e.g., whale evolution, lack of complex pre-Cambrian fossil evidence) no longer holds water. In addition, the falsifiability of evolution has been satisfactorily addressed by numerous scientists and philosophers and it is indeed a "theory" in the classic sense. My disappointment isn't that his hypothesis is so unexpected (which can be great!) but that he provides no possible basis for its feasibility, which is a major bedrock of scientific theorization. Biophotons from DNA that somehow communicate agricultural information to people while they're under the influence of hallucinogens?? This is pseudoscience and provides no evidence to support that this is how biophotons work. (As an aside, biophotons appear to be released from the lipid membrane, which is the main area of cell-cell communication via visible light-- not DNA.) I think zaney unexpected ideas in science are fascinating and can lead to unexpected breakthroughs and major paradigm shifts. But they need to have some REASONABLE physical basis. In such instances, the burden of proof will always be on the hypothesizer. And, as somebody coming from within the field, I felt like his arguments were extremely weak and reflective of his poor knowledge of biology, which he himself admits to early in the book. In fact, he's guilty of the same "cowboy science" he criticizes. Anyways, still worth a read though. It's always a valuable reminder to pause, take a step back, and refocus.

[Jenny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Let's start with what I liked.

I like how Narby takes a deconstructionist approach to anthropology. I like how he fearlessly points out the cultural biases and confirmation bias of the scientific method. I love Narby's cross-cultural, interdisciplinary, "big picture" approach. I like how he tries to find evidentiary support for all of his claims. I like that he wrote for a regular, non-academic audience. I like that he framed his theory in the context of a story.

As you can see, there are a lot of positive things about this book!

Now, for what I didn't care for: his actual theory.

Narby claims that shamanistic practices, particularly the extremely hallucinogenic rituals of the Western Amazonian peoples, allow a person's consciousness to perceive reality on a molecular level. While in this hallucinogenic state, a person can communicate with their own DNA through images and music. Furthermore, he claims that DNA itself is conscious and can talk to the DNA in any other life form through light waves, so when you establish contact with your own DNA, you also have access to all the knowledge in all the DNA in the world. This explains the advanced botanical knowledge of indigenous peoples, as well as the extremely common mythological imagery across the world of a divine creator represented by a "twinned snake" (the double helix structure of the DNA molecule). Also, DNA is from space and is consciously controlling the course of evolution.

This is an idea of spirituality that, surprisingly, I feel like I could get behind. I've been intrigued by shamanism and the religious experiences associated with hallucinogens for years; I think there's a lot there that we don't understand. The combination of spirituality and science feels like it's on the right track to me, and I've always liked the idea of SOMETHING that connects all the living creatures on the planet (let's call it the over-soul, to borrow a term from Emerson), even if I've never actually felt such a connection myself.

That being said, I just. Don't. Buy it. Each successive chapter makes a wilder claim, and as they say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I don't think Narby provides anywhere near enough evidence to support his theory (though to be fair, he makes a valiant effort and does indeed support his ideas better than I expected him to). By the end, I decided he had a great idea for a sci-fi/fantasy piece, something along the lines of the back half of the Ender series, but not much of a credible scientific theory.

Still, it was definitely an interesting read. I can think of several people I know who would eat this up, so to them, I say go for it.

[Walter · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was a slightly crazy book by an anthropologist who has taken too many hallucinogenic "ayahuasca journeys". He has a thesis that ayahuasca allows shamans to communicate with nature via DNA. He proposes that DNA crystals in cells can receive information from biophotonic emissions and that all life is interacting in this way. I could have entertained his ideas if he presented them differently. He was very antagonistic to Western science, but still attempted to take advantage of it's legitimacy to prop up his theories about nature. I was very annoyed by this book.

[Sean · Rating 2 out of 5]

Look, the first time I took a hallucinogen, I too saw all of the natural world break apart and twist together and reveal to me its interlinked workings, its fundamental connectedness to me and every other living and non-living entity in the universe entire, I too saw into the deeper reality of the unified cosmic consciousness, and I (alone?) learned that the funniest thing in all of creation is the taste of a 7-11 watermelon Slurpee.

But did I write a breathless book about it and pretend that none of this had ever occurred to anyone else in the western world and that only I, on my personal magical mystery tour into the world of psychedelics, had discovered the ONE TRUE SECRET that would forever re-write the laws of science and place me alongside Copernicus, Newton and Einstein?

No. I did not. I went to bed early, closed my eyes, and watched the pretty colors some more.

Jeremey Narby took the other route, and so, following his ayahuasca fueled vision of two giant, fluorescent snakes, wrote a book every sentence of which is delivered as if by Pinto in Animal House, the first time he gets stoned, when with eyes wide he says, “So, our whole solar system could be like one tiny atom in the fingernail of some other giant being!” Gee willikers! Neat!

The book starts off all right. Questioning the scientific method as the only means of gaining knowledge is certainly reasonable. His investigations into comparative mythology and the preponderance therein of snakes and twins across cultures is interesting, if not already rather well known. But the book just gets loopier after that.

Narby bashes all scientists with absurd generalizations about how they hate mystery, etc., he trots out all kinds of nonsense about evolution, which he grasps not at all, and every one of his arguments is along the lines of, “Did you realize how complicated the human genome is? Let me throw a bunch of huge numbers at you! See? Wow is it ever big! And that’s supposed to have come about by chance? No way!”

Here’s a paraphrase of how most chapters begin: “Now I’m not a biologist, so I don’t know anything about biology, but I read a book and talked to this friend, and oh my god! You won’t believe what I found! DNA is superintelligent and comes from outer space!”

Anyway. He’s right that there is more to the universe than what we in the west think we know, and more ways than we know to know it. But he’s too timid to actually propose anything other than a mushy-headed load of vague crap about consciousness I can’t even summarize since he never directly says what it is. In short, it’s something about how life is so complicated, it must have been directed by some form of intelligence. Hm, now where have I heard that argument before?

[Nicolas Shump · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant and thought-provoking book that argues that perhaps the drug-induced trances of an Amazonian tribe and their creation myths are somehow related to modern genetics.
Narby is a Stanford PhD in Anthropology who did his dissertation on these peoples, but this is not his dissertation. Instead it is one of the most interesting and thought-provoking books I have ever read! It brings together so many of the issues that interest me: Religion, Science, Evolution, Physics, Cosmology, the Supernatural, and Indigenous knowledge. I initially thought of the writings of Carlos Castaneda, but there is a scientific and intellectual rigor in Narby's book that I can not find in Castaneda's works.
I find that Narby makes a compelling case for the unity or at least the synthesis of 20th century biology, DNA, and the indigenous knowledge and visions of these South American shamans.
Reading Narby's experience of taking hallucinogens was eerie, but I could relate to some of his sensations. Your mind is never the same after these types of experiences. Though your more rational self may want to deny the reality of "altered states" of consciousness, the vividness of the experience won't allow you to deny them entirely or to dismiss the possibility of them either.
I fond myself in constant agreement with Narby about the arrogance and consequent ignorance of Western "science" and knowledge. Finally, Narby's narrative is compulsively readable. It is a tremendously important book.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a winner. Exactly the right balance between scholarship and accessibility. Almost half the book is made up of end notes and bibliography, and Dr. Narby is brave, cautious, and eloquent stating his thesis: that it is possible, and even likely, that DNA is sentient. Since he's a vetted scientist, this is no easy claim to make. Nor does he rely except but for a fraction of the book on his own experience with Ayahuasca, which is very limited, and one of the few things that I would have liked to see differently in the book. He comes by his thesis combining studies in a number of disciplines, from biochemistry to comparative mythology to his own field of anthropology, etc. I especially liked his criticism of the fact that scientist termed that part of DNA that we do not understand with the pejorative term "junk DNA." He said, "This is cowboy science." We shoot first, then ask questions. He would have liked to see that aspect of it termed "mystery DNA" as that would admit the truth of it: which is that scientists really do not understand how the brain works, nor certainly even less do they understand DNA.

I loved how he talked about the 250,000 species of plants in the Western Amazon and how the fact that native Amazonians were able to put together the right three plants out of these 250,000 to create a substance now called in pharmacology curare. Scientists chalk this up to "random" luck, even though in the particular case of curare, not only is the combination of plants exactly the right kind to create a drug that will kill the prey, but not poison its meat, and also relax the muscles so that, say, if a money is shot it will wrap its tail around a tree branch and the hunter will have to climb the tree to get it. To make this drug one must cook it for a period of 72 hours exactly, and also not be anywhere near the boiling pot, as its fumes are extremely toxic and will kill if inhaled. But according to scientists, the fact that Amazonians have taught themselves how to do this is pure luck. Some luck! But examples of such random luck abound in the Amazon and the pharmaceutical industry, though quick to disparage its source, is also quick to capitalize on these drugs and their multiple uses in Western medicine.

Too much to list here, but I annotated about half of it: there just was so much in it to make one think.

[Y. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great point about modern science: "The rational approach tends to minimize what it does not understand ... (It) starts from the idea that everything is explainable. Mystery is, in some sense, the enemy. This means that it prefers pejorative and even wrong answers to admitting its own lack of understanding.
The molecular biology that considers that 97% of the DNA in our body is 'junk' reveals not only its degree of ignorance but the extent to which it is prepared to belittle the unknown ... This is cowboy science and it is not as objective as it claims. Neutrality or simple honesty would have consisted in saying, 'For the moment, we do not know.' It would have been just as easier to call it 'mystery' DNA, for instance."


Food for thought: "How can nature not be conscious when our own consciousness is produced by nature?"


Interesting metaphor: "Ayahuasca is the television of the forest."

[Laura ☾ · Rating 3 out of 5]

While Narby's central ideas are intriguing, this felt very long-winded, and presented relatively few actual arguments as compared to the number of pages, and very few compelling arguments beyond 'well these things resemble each other'

[Jacob · Rating 1 out of 5]

The concept and the first chapter hooked me, and then the downhill slide began. The style of writing bothered me more than anything else. Narby's insistence on conferring some kind of scientific framework onto his thinking is mind-numbingly dull. The same three thoughts trotted out again and again. Contains 40 pages worth of interesting things to say. I couldn't just abandon it, though, because the material seemed so promising--this idea that shamans, through the practice of drinking ayahuasca, are connecting to life's building blocks. Oh well.

[Petroldo · Rating 1 out of 5]

Alex Jones for people with graduate degrees. This book is a brilliant showcase of how badly postmodernism has ruined humanities and social sciences.

[Maria Teresa Santos · Rating 2 out of 5]

Will give two stars just for the crazy amount imagination the author had to have in order to write this. Other than that, it's complete nonsense.

[João Mendes · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked up this book on the count of my deep love for the word "Cosmic," thinking I would learn something new about the Cosmos. Instead, what I discovered in reading The Cosmic Serpent totally caught me by surprise.

The Cosmic Serpent is a powerful book synthesizing the spiritual, biological, and cosmic connections of the DNA through many civilizations, including Ancient Egypt, Australian, China, and the native societies of the Amazonia, to name name a few.

Using a narrative format, the book is also a story of Jeremy's own process of self-atonement. By the end of the book, the author finally sheds his anthropologist biases and fully accepts the native perspective on the nature of reality—a world where plants and animals speak with their human counterparts in altered states of reality induced by ayahuasca and shamanic practices.

The Cosmic Serpent is a wonderful read! Besides the phenomenal discoveries, the book breaks with long-held anthropological traditions of living amongst the natives while retaining an “observer” perspective, and lays a pathway for future anthropologists wishing to truly access the reality of native culture.

Highly recommended!

João Mendes
Author | Musician | Humanitarian
Co-Author of SOUND—The Fabric of Soul, Consciousness, Reality, and the Cosmos

[travis lawrence · Rating 5 out of 5]

a great first person detailed account of his research in the studies of shamanic accounts of the great mythical serpent found in all religions and our modern notion of DNA

how they are the same story just told in different manners
how further discovery of DNA's role does nothing more than exactly correlate with the poetic tales of the great cosmic serpent

a quick read
maybe too quick
i took it out on 2-3 sittings
starts off a little slow by following his introduction and buildup of what he will shortly discover along his studies
once things start falling into place for narby, it becomes a fascinating and awaking experience

good for anyone who needs a wake up call on modern western science
and is afraid of it becoming the new religion of our era

[AndrewR · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of My Landmark books: A book that changed the way I view reality, the universe and my place here. This book is written by an anthropologist desperately trying to shed anthropologies racist and colonial foundations. In the process he stumbles on spectacular revelations concerning "ancient knowledge" (which of course is nothing new to the indigenous people he is living with) and intelligence of species other than humans. He has a second book titled: Intelligence in Nature which is not quite as mind boggeling, but very interesting. This is often filed under the genre New Age.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jeremy Narby was doing anthropology field work with a community in the Peruvian Amazon called the Quirishari in the mid-1980s. It was there he had his first experiences with a hallucinogen called ayahuasca. His experiences with the substance, and his talks with others in the community about their experiences, were a major source of many of the speculations found in the latter part of the book.

From Narby's interviews he realized that there were coincidences in the experience of many of the users of the plant, that these further coincided with what he was taught about native medicine among Amazon people and his further study into DNA.

Narby seems to realize as much as anyone that coincidences do not a medical revolution make, but he hopes his ideas inspire deeper scientific investigations.

Among his observations:

Those who drink the brew made from the ayahuasca experience several visual hallucinations that give them what they believe are deeper understandings of plants for medication found throughout the rainforest. They and users of other plant-based hallucinogens frequently have visions about serpents intertwined. Those he was studying believe that the serpent is the ultimate life principal. Narby also points to several coincidental religious icons featuring similar symbols, down to the medical caduceus which originated with the Greeks. Ayahuasca, by the way, also grows in a serpentine shape.

The Quirishari believe that the plants they harvest often have symbolic shapes to help identify their uses, such as a plant used to counteract snake bites having fang-like structures on the leaves.

DNA is very similar visually to the intertwined serpents. He wonders if this, in some way, is what is being represented in these mystical visions. He then goes on to list some of the more amazing facts about DNA. Each strand of DNA is made up of just four molecules in various regular combinations. A strand is only 10 atoms wide but the strands in a single cell would stretch out to about 3 meters (6 feet) in length. If you could glue these tiny strings end to end from all the cells in your body they would stretch 744 million miles (1.2 billion kilometers). 

Narby then extends this idea out further. Every cell and every living organism has DNA, and human cells have some of the same markers found in yeast, one of the oldest organisms. This means somewhere in the seas these four nucleobases were formed, linked together in a way that encoded information, found a way into cells, found a handy enzyme to split the coils into identical halves once in a while to reproduce, and gradually came to inhabit the earth with living descendants. 

This leads to other speculations on the source of DNA ... chance or an otherworldly hand? But beyond these speculations Narby hopes for deeper research into the hallucinogens at a chemical level as well as the interactions with other living beings, and also hopes that these speculations will also lead to greater advances in pharmacology and medicine.

This is the kind of book almost designed to start arguments among scientists, and I'm sure those have happened over the past 18 years since the first publication. Many of the questions about DNA had already been asked, though not always answered. In some ways a new speculation in science gets an immediate dismissal from some but will sometimes gain a foothold for overall acceptance. Pangea made sense to every school child who'd studied a globe but took most of a century to become accepted science. It was a similar process when a Catholic priest first suggested the "big bang" as first cause of the universe.  In Narby's case Materialism may be the ultimate winner, but that doesn't keep it from getting a challenge now and then. When it is challenged it's fun to watch and ponder.

[Joe Davis · Rating 1 out of 5]

Can I put zero stars? This is what you get when you let an anthropologist attempt to write about evolution, organic chemistry, and biology. This book is nothing but a collection of logical fallacies, cheery picked data, and magical thinking. I feel dumber for having subjected myself to this idiocy. I will forever hold this against my friend who suggested I read it.

[Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very mixed feelings on this. On one hand Narby is an excellent writer, a thoughtful anthropologist, and made me think some very interesting thoughts. On the other hand (the second half of the book especially) veers into extremely wild and unsupported arguments, each a more outlandish than the last. He made the cardinal sin of "looking for evidence to fit his theories" (and unsurprisingly found it by cherry-picking info, and having a very basic understanding of biology). I really disliked how he wrote this book centred on himself, his writing process, his thoughts, with descriptions on how long he spent looking at papers, how he called one friend to ask about one wild theory (and who's answer supported his wild theory), how he was constantly "shocked" and "astounded" by what he read. He spends most of the book complaining about western scientific practices, but then bases all of his theories on shamanic practices in the western Amazon on papers by westerners he reads from his house in Switzerland.

I don't think anyone could have predicted how fast scientific knowledge would have moved since DNA was discovered, but in the 25 years since the book was published a number of this observations about molecular biology and evolution have been disproven.

I sound negative, but I liked this book, especially the first part, and it IS an interesting read (also a quick one). I feel there are sections I would want to re-read in the future. It was also structured in an interesting and unusual way. But it is also annoying and self-centred.

[WIlliam Gerrard · Rating 4 out of 5]

I eagerly anticipated this book as I had heard it mentioned as a classic on Ayahuasca and as a good reference point in a number of other books and Ayahuasca and shamanism. The author begins in typical Ayahuasca tourist fashion, and undertakes you on his Amazonian journey with a shaman, partaking in the sacred Yage ceremony. If anything I was a little disappointed with the author's own experiences and felt that he had perhaps misunderstood his visions a little. I read on, however, and the novel turned into a page-turning thriller. The research done on the twins / dual serpent cosmology myths was fantastic and a revelation to me. It was clear that Narby had done a great deal of research on his hypothesis. I think to anybody studying shamanism, the middle chapters of Narby's book are essential. As the book moved towards the DNA link with Ayahuasca I was at first sceptical but the author wrote in a convincing manner and I felt that the extremely distant link was well-pointed out and certainly a possibility though I can see the scientists more easily dismissing 'The Cosmic Serpent' than perhaps the ancient medicine men who I would imagine would be more open-minded. As an apprentice ayahuasquero myself, who has studied exclusively on my own in the West, I think that there is a lot more to the DNA link than meets the eye. Ayahuasca is a substance which does alter the mind in a tremendous way and I See true possibilities that it is what we call DNA triggering some of the visions. I think the book highlights, not how much we know of science, but how little we know of ancient shamanism. A true understanding of Ayahuasca and the power it harnesses, if well understood could drastically improve our world, if nothing less than to bind Western man back to his natural roots.

[Kelly · Rating 2 out of 5]

Great until...

The beginning of this book is exciting. The author proposes something groundbreaking and potentially world-changing. But there’s a section towards the middle where his writing devolves into a sort of bias-satisfying overview of other disciplines that the author does not know deeply, where he makes claims based on very surface understandings of the material, looking for anything and everything that remotely relates to his hypotheses. I would argue that this portion of the book does not hold up (read his footnotes; rather than providing evidence to support a claim, he often just cites something out of a paper or a book that is marginally related and then talks more about his claim; having a footnote after certain claims makes it FEEL like something supported by thorough research, but it surely is not), and at this point I was quite disappointed. The ending feels slapped together; I truly feel this could have been a blog post instead of a trade paperback.

[Nicholas Lyell · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't actually finish this. Not something I very often say about a book. There were some pages with interesting perspective and information, but everything else in this book is so far up the author's own ego, its hard to take it seriously sometimes. He goes to great lengths to provide evidence for the very extraordinary claims made here, but the evidence is so fraught with confirmation bias, simple misunderstandings of science, and giant leaps in logical thinking that by the point I gave up on it, I felt like I should have been keeping track of all the faulty evidence and logic throughout just to try and keep away from the later conclusions that rested on those early problems.

[Kevin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Hey did you guys know that, um, sometimes people do drugs and see a snake? That's like, um, DNA, because you know, um, DNA is like, long and thin, you know? Like, the shape of a DNA is kinda snakey

[Lea]

(about 50 pages missing, had to return it tho. Someday! So cool!!!)

[Mgrdich Minasian · Rating 2 out of 5]

the book is interesting when you read it as a fiction it has no scientific approach, bunch of assumption without any evidence and biological explanation in it are very poor and some of it outdated like when he tries to debunk evolution of whales and the Cambrian explosion, the first few chapter were interesting the cultures the myths his journey i was all for it but then it got downhill from there.

[Joe · Rating 2 out of 5]

I stopped reading when Dr. Narby started using pseudoscience to explain phenomena that could be explained with scientific measures. While looking through other reviews I'm disturbed by the number of people that believe this is scientific or comes close to a scientific rigorous explanation.

[bobby · Rating 1 out of 5]

No.

[Claudia · Rating 5 out of 5]

For those familiar with this subject, it will be a very interesting incursion, through the eyes of an anthropologist, into the life of some amazonian tribes and shamanism practices.