Appreciation: 'The earth’s secret miracle worker is not a plant or an animal: it’s fungi'

Fungi are responsible for almost all our food production, and most of our processed materials. They are also to be thanked for many of the important medical breakthroughs in human history that treat both physical and mental ailments, for naturally sequestering and slowly releasing carbon, for optimizing industrial processes, and so much more.

Without fungi, the world as we know it would not exist.

The earth’s secret miracle worker is not a plant or an animal. It’s fungi | Giuliana Furci

 

Not to forget Darwin's favourite pet, the earthworm !

"Otzi" already knew about the properties of mushrooms : "Ötzi the Iceman was found carrying two different polypore species: Piptoporus betulinus, notable for its long usage in European folk medicines,[30] and Fomes fomentarius, which was likely used for starting fires."

BTW, just reminds me that I have a box of "shitake" in the garage that I must soak in water, then place by a window sill (according to what's written on the bow, if I can remember well...)

 

@AlainK, thanks for the Wikipedia link about Ötzi. That's an amazing article - particularly all the meat, grains and fruits that this man had just eaten 5000 years ago. And yes, the fungi found on him.

 

The tattoes too are interesting. Mind you, though my sons have some, I don't like tattoes (the youger one has many, but he's an adult now... ^_^)

I saw a documentary on "Arte" (a very reliable TV channel) and they said that what was surprising was that the tatoes were placed on parts of the body corresponding to acupunture spots.

I'm not into Feng-shui, or religion and that hocus-pocus sh*** at all, not at all, but it seems that 30,000 years ago, people had a form of empiric knowledge of medicine that maybe we have lost.