7 ms·
> Thus, opium alkaloids were detected in Late Bronze Age containers > different hallucinogenic compounds, mainly nicotine, tryptamines and tropane alkaloids ha
by kortex 3y ago
> Thus, opium alkaloids were detected in Late Bronze Age containers
> different hallucinogenic compounds, mainly nicotine, tryptamines and tropane alkaloids have been chemically documented in Prehispanic artefacts from the Americas, and psychoactive compounds of Cannabis in archaeological wooden braziers from China.
> The alkaloids ephedrine, atropine and scopolamine were detected, and their concentrations estimated [in human hair]
> The results furnish direct evidence of the consumption of plant drugs and, more interestingly, they reveal the use of multiple psychoactive species.
Basically, we have long discovered "drug paraphernalia" and other adjacent materials, suggesting drug use (namely cannabis, tobacco, various psychoactive mushrooms, opium, various stimulants like areca and ephedra, deliriants like Datura, and of course alcohol). But we haven't known for sure that these meant the drugs were consumed recreationally/medicinally. This gives direct evidence the drugs were in fact consumed deliberately.
tl;dr - Homo sapiens got high.
- akiselev 3y agoA fascinating thought is that we might have been doing this since _before_ homo sapiens emerged as a species. We've got plenty of evidence that we had cultural propagation of knowledge among our early ancestors for over three millions of years via the Oldowan and Acheulean stone industries. Since hunter gatherers naturally passed along knowledge of the safety of edible plants, at what point did they figure out how to get high and start passing that along too? It's entirely plausible that our species and immediate ancestors have been getting high for millions of years! Since we have to eat anyways, we might have discovered our first high before our first stone tool! Kinda puts the war on drugs in an even worse light.
- calderknight 3y agoHow long have Homo Sapiens been around? More or less than three million years?
- stuxnet79 3y agoAnatomically modern 'homo sapiens' have been around for much less than that - 120,000 years
- akiselev 3y agoThe oldest homo sapien fossil is about 300,000 years old. 3 million years ago would still be in the latter half of the reign of the Australopithecus genus. Homo habilis hadn't even appeared yet to kick off our genus.
- calderknight 3y agoThat makes sense. I was confused because I just read a paragraph that talked about archaic humans of 2 million years ago. But now I realise it was using the term in a more general sense - specific to Homo rather than Homo Sapien
- sidewndr46 3y agoWasn't this proposition put forth by Terence McKenna?
- ofalkaed 3y agoWe almost certainly did, animals of all sorts like being intoxicated. In apple country you often see that animals will ignore apples until they have fallen and fermented and then they get drunk off them. Deer love pot and appear to get high from eating it. In Bali they have a serious problem with monkeys steeling the drinks of tourists and getting drunk.
- 55555 3y agoI enjoyed reading your comment but there's definitely no way to get drunk eating fallen apples. Do the math. And the monkeys in Bali are not stealing tourists' drinks.
- bheadmaster 3y agoI neither enjoyed nor suffered reading your comment, but there's definitely a way to get drunk eating fallen apples. Do the math. And the monkeys in Bali are stealing tourists' drinks.
- ofalkaed 3y agoMonkies stealing booze is a fairly common issue all over the tropical world, just do a search for drunk monkies. Bali is known for its thieving monkies and they even exploit it for tourism, they have a park called Alcoholic Monkey Forest filled with thieving monkies. St. Kitts is also known for its drunk monkies. You do the math for us, you seem to have all the answers.
- b112 3y agoSince hunter gatherers naturally passed along knowledge of the safety of edible plants People had no aspirin, no painkillers, multiple parasites, diseases, rotting teeth, etc. While getting high may have been part if it, for some, it may have been relief.
- whoopdedo 3y agoBut they did. Some of the oldest written records we have describe the pain relieving effects of willow bark. But your point stands that for thousands of years intoxicants were just another type of medicine.
- b112 3y agoTrue, and this brings up another thing. Willow bark is highly regional. So people were likely to be limited to some degree, in what choices they had. And the winter was isolating for many, I recall reading newspapers from the late 1800s (eg, 1880 onward), about how small towns were so happy to "dig the road out" and talk of "getting fresh supplies". Even with trains, and shipping, and world wide trade that the British Empire afforded at that time, if your road had 15 feet of snow on it, well.. you weren't going 50 miles to the next town. So they had to store, locally, everything for the winter. And my point is, 19th century trade was immense. I can imagine tribes had some trade, but I doubt it happened at most times of the year, and I imagine it wasn't guaranteed delivery of some items. So I think, truly, local was it.
- naruhodo 3y agoI recall seeing some television nature documentary showing monkeys and other animals getting drunk on fermented rotting fruit lying on the ground. This has been going on for a while.
- whalesalad 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoned_ape_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoned_ape_theory
- the_only_law 3y ago> different hallucinogenic compounds, mainly nicotine… Wait what? Nicotine is hallucinogenic? What sort of ungodly dose do you need for that.
- kortex 3y agoHa! I didn't catch that the first time. That's a direct quote from the paper though. I think maybe they meant psychotropic, not hallucinogenic, as tropane alkaloids aren't traditionally hallucinogenic. Or they started with "different hallucinogenic compounds, mainly tryptamines" and then edited in nicotine and tropane alkaloids, and missed it on editing.