MushroomTribes

The method

How we rank evidence

MushroomTribes exists to separate what is known from what is merely repeated. This page explains the system that appears on every culture, species, debate, and map marker across the site.

One principle above all

The archive never blurs the line between evidence and interpretation. A carved stone is evidence; the claim that it proves an ancient mushroom cult is interpretation. A recorded chant is evidence; the story built around it is interpretation. Most bad psychedelic history is made by letting the second quietly wear the clothes of the first. Every page here is labelled so the two never trade places.

The six labels

Each entry carries one of six labels. They describe the kind of support behind a claim — not a simple better-to-worse score. "Newly documented" is not weaker than "archaeological"; it is a different situation. What the labels share is honesty about what we can and cannot say.

  1. 01 Living Tradition Still alive today — carried in ceremony, song, and living memory by the people who hold it.
  2. 02 Written in History Carried down through histories, chronicles, sacred texts, and testimony across the centuries.
  3. 03 Etched in Stone Read from artifacts, carvings, codices, and images whose meaning we reach for across time.
  4. 04 Newly Surfaced Just come to light — recent work drawing an old story into view.
  5. 05 Contested Mystery A tantalising possibility still argued over — real enough to chase, unproven enough to keep its mystery.
  6. 06 Legend A story that lives in the imagination — widely told, deeply felt, and beyond what the record can yet confirm.

Evidence type versus confidence

We record two different things. The evidence label says what kind of support exists. A separate confidence reading — high, medium, low — says how strongly we hold the overall picture, all things considered. A tradition can rest on solid ethnography (a strong kind) yet still carry medium confidence because the fieldwork is decades old or geographically narrow. Keeping the two apart prevents a single impressive source from standing in for certainty.

The kinds of evidence on a page

Within an entry, the "Evidence" section separates support by kind, because a colonial text, a living interview, and a carved artifact are not interchangeable:

  • Firsthand testimony
  • Contemporary ethnography
  • Colonial text
  • Indigenous manuscript
  • Archaeology
  • Iconography
  • Linguistic evidence
  • Oral tradition
  • Botanical / mycological
  • Later scholarly interpretation

How we rate a debate

Debate pages state the strongest case for and the strongest case against side by side, then give a standing — open, leans supported, leans against, or unresolved. We do not manufacture a verdict to end an argument the scholarship has not ended. When the honest answer is "we don't know," that is the answer we publish.

Which sources we trust, and in what order

When sources conflict, we weight them roughly in this order:

  1. Indigenous scholars and community sources
  2. Primary ethnography and direct testimony
  3. Peer-reviewed academic research
  4. Colonial and archival primary documents (read critically)
  5. Museum and university collections
  6. Reputable secondary scholarship

Psychedelic lifestyle blogs are cited only when the subject is modern popular belief or commercialisation — never as evidence for a historical or ethnographic claim.

The writing standard

Tone follows evidence. We avoid the two failure modes of the genre — false certainty and false mystery:

Avoid

“The Maya definitely worshipped psychedelic mushrooms.”

Prefer

“Carved mushroom stones have led some scholars to propose a ritual mushroom complex. Others dispute this, and no directly observed ceremony survives to settle the argument.”

Where an entry cannot be sure, it says so plainly in a "What remains uncertain" section. That section is not a disclaimer bolted on at the end — it is part of the evidence.

Corrections

Scholarship changes and we get things wrong. Every page shows an editorial record and, where relevant, a corrections history. Communities and scholars can request amendments or the removal of sensitive material. Getting it right matters more than getting it first.