Which is usually back to back with the thought that in bygone times "the human mind used to be cleaner / healthier / smarter and it was slowly destroyed by modern living"

There's not that much difference between our behavior and that of a chicken fixated on the chalk line in front of it.

Not to say it's a hallucination, but, to modern standards, if this were publicly funded research, it seems like it would have been a gross violation of ethics or other non-technical criteria. Interested to see how people think of it in later years, e.g., now.