Hard evidence of the use of cocaine and the hallucinogenic drug DMT a thousand years ago has been uncovered, according to a new study.
Researchers found that Native Americans used multiple psychotropic plants – possibly at the same time – to induce hallucinations and ‘altered consciousness’ a millennium before hippies first turned on, tuned in and dropped out in the swinging 1960s.
The research team was searching for ancient occupations in the dry rock shelters of the now-dry Sora River valley in south western Bolivia when they found a ritual bundle as part of a human burial.
The bundle – bound in a leather bag – contained, among other things, two snuffing tablets used to pulverise psychotropic plants into snuff, a snuffing tube – for smoking hallucinogenic plants, and a pouch made of three fox snouts.
Hard evidence of the use of cocaine and hallucinogenic drugs a thousand years ago has been uncovered, according to a new study. Researchers found that Native Americans used multiple psychotropic plants, thanks to this bundle
Dr Jose Capriles said: ‘We already knew that psychotropics were important in the spiritual and religious activities of the societies of the south-central Andes, but we did not know that these people were using so many different compounds and possibly combining them together.’
Dr Capriles, assistant Professor of anthropology at Penn State University, added: ‘This is the largest number of psychoactive substances ever found in a single archaeological assemblage from South America.’
The team used accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon dating to determine the age of the outer leather bag and found that it was about 1,000 years old.
Dr Capriles said: ‘This period in this location is associated with the disintegration of the Tiwanaku state and the emergence of regional polities.’
The research team also used a scalpel to obtain a tiny scraping from the interior of the fox-snout pouch and analysed the material using liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry.
Melanie Miller, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Otago in New Zealand, and research affiliate at the University of California, Berkeley, was responsible for analysing the samples.
Dr Miller said: ‘This method is highly sensitive and very effective for detecting the presence of minute amounts of specific compounds from very small samples.’
The researchers identified the presence of multiple psychoactive compounds – including cocaine, benzoylecgonine – the primary metabolite of cocaine, harmine, bufotenin, dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and possibly psilocin – a compound found in magic mushrooms – from at least three different plant species.
Dr Capriles said the fox-snout pouch was likely to have belonged to a ‘shaman’ – a type of witch doctor.
He said: ‘Shamans were ritual specialists who had knowledge of plants and how to use them as mechanisms to engage with supernatural beings, including venerated ancestors who were thought to exist in other realms.
‘It is possible that the shaman who owned this pouch consumed multiple different plants simultaneously to produce different effects or extend his or her hallucinations.”
The bundle – bound in a leather bag – contained, among other things, two snuffing tablets used to pulverise psychotropic plants into snuff, a snuffing tube – for smoking hallucinogenic plants, and a pouch made of three fox snouts.
Dr Capriles said that finding harmine and DMT – the primary ingredients of ayahuasca, a drink reported to induce hallucinations and altered consciousness – in the pouch suggests the use of the brew as one of the drugs in the shaman’s kit.
He added: ‘Some scholars believe that ayahuasca has relatively recent origins, while others argue that it may have been used for centuries, or even millennia.
‘Given the presence of harmine and DMT together in the pouch we found, it is likely that this shaman ingested these simultaneously to achieve a hallucinogenic state, either through a beverage, such as ayahuasca, or through a composite snuff that contained these plants in a single mixture.
‘This finding suggests that ayahuasca may have been used up to 1,000 years ago.’
The find also indicates ‘intricate botanical knowledge’ by the owner of the pouch and an effort to acquire hallucinogenic plants – as the plants came from different regions of mostly tropical South America, according to the researchers.
The research team was searching for ancient occupations in the dry rock shelters (pictured) of the now-dry Sora River valley in south western Bolivia when they found a ritual bundle as part of a human burial.
Dr Miller said: ‘The presence of these compounds indicates the owner of this kit had access to at least three plants with psychoactive compounds, but potentially even four or five.
‘None of the psychoactive compounds we found come from plants that grow in this area of the Andes, indicating either the presence of elaborate exchange networks or the movement of this individual across diverse environments to procure these special plants.’
She added: ‘This discovery reminds us that people in the past had extensive knowledge of these powerful plants and their potential uses, and they sought them out for their medicinal and psychoactive properties.’
The findings were published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
