WHY ARE WE HERE?

How did Humans get to become part of Earth’s history, why are we here, and what do mushrooms have to do with any of this?

The earth has gone through many transformations, each one lasting millions or billions of years. For a long amount of time the earth was a barren and difficult place to live. Plants struggled to escape the ocean or waters, and rarely made it on to dry land to survive. Earth was harsh, hostile, gravity bound with agressive storms, wind and powerful UV light from sunlight.

Plants struggled to absorb the nutrients from rock, which meant they would slowly dry out, dying on the rocks.

So plants chose waters where nutrients and minerals were abundant. Life stayed in the water until one moment about half a billion years ago.

Mycelium

This moment was fungi. They could chemically degrade the substrate to source nutrients. Feasting on the bare rock itself.

Plants then developed specialised cells to trade with fungi, swapping nutrients and glucose. A synergistic nutrient relationship.

This was a Pivotal Moment in evolution. For the first time complex terrestrial ecosystems were created on earth.

Plants swapped nutrients from rocks, and returned their fungi partners with glucose using photosynthesis with CO2 and the sun. This symbiosis meant that the plants could leave the waters and conquer the world.

Thanks be to Fungi

Fungi have been integral to the development of life on Earth. In fact, neither land plants nor terrestrial animals would exist them. 

Fungi were some of the first complex life forms on land, helping plants move away from being these marginal tiny little things on the water’s edge into large forests and entire ecosystems.

Changing the composition of the atmosphere.

Fungi ARE DEATH AND LIFE

Without fungi to aid in decomposition, all life in the forest would soon be buried under a mountain of dead plant matter. 

Fungi are the great decomposers of the natural world - the ultimate zero waste. They break down dead, organic matter and by doing that they release nutrients and those nutrients are then made available for plants to survive.

It’s how everything is reborn - allowing this entire web of life to be interconnected.

Fungi eat death, and in doing so, create new life.