A very interesting review in New Scientist makes the point that fungi were not for ancient humans the marginal resources that their near invisibility in the traditional archaeological record might suggest. In fact, they contributed to diets, health and social organisation, and even fire-making. Here’s a quick summary of what new analytical techniques in archaeology, sometimes linked with ethnography, are revealing, according to the article.
Fire technology (Mesolithic to Neolithic): Polypore fungi, especially Fomes fomentarius, were deliberately harvested, cut, scorched and processed into amadou. This is a felt-like, highly flammable material that people used as portable tinder, forming compact fire-starting kits together with birch bark and pyrite.
Food (Palaeolithic, including Neanderthals): Evidence from dental plaque DNA shows consumption of multiple species (e.g. gray shag, split gill, porcini), suggesting diets were more diverse than has been assumed. Mushrooms may partially explain isotopic signals previously attributed to meat consumption.
Medicine: A Neanderthal individual consumed grasses containing penicillin-producing mould, possibly to treat a dental abscess. Later, Ötzi the Iceman (~3300 BCE) carried amadou, but also birch polypore mushrooms. These may have had medicinal purposes (anti-parasitic, antimicrobial), though they were not found in the stomach, so a new hypothesis suggests they may have been used as fishing floats, based on morphology and experimental replication.
Subsistence and resource extraction: Polypores and puffballs may have been burned to produce smoke to anaesthetise bees, making harvesting honey a lot easier.
Fermentation (Neolithic): Moulds such as Monascus enabled enzymatic conversion of rice starch to sugars, facilitating alcohol production by the so-called “red qu” method. Pottery residues in East Asia show evidence of such brewing some 10,000 years ago, much earlier than originally thought. Fermented beverages were likely used in ritual, mortuary, and communal contexts and may have contributed to social cohesion, identity formation and early political and religious structures.