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Drug Usage In Ancient Cultural / Religious Practices

ramonmercado

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Drugs Found in Hair of Ancient Andean Mummies
Charles Q. Choi
for National Geographic News

October 22, 2008

The first hard evidence of psychoactive drug use in the ancient Andes has been discovered in mummies' hair, a new study says.

The finding confirms that predecessors of the Inca known as the Tiwanaku used mind-altering substances, and hints that the civilization relied on far-reaching trade networks to obtain the drugs.

Scientists recently analyzed 32 naturally mummified Tiwanaku bodies discovered in northern Chile's Azapa Valley, which lies in the Atacama Desert.

The researchers discovered a compound called harmine in hairs from an adult male and a one-year-old baby, who both date to sometime between A.D. 800 and 1200. Harmine can help humans absorb hallucinogens and may be a powerful antidepressant.

"These individuals probably ingested harmine in therapeutic or medicinal practices, some maybe related to pregnancy and childbirth," said study co-author Juan Pablo Ogalde, a chemical archaeologist at the University of Tarapacá in Arica, Chile.

"However, it is possible also that consumption of harmine was involved in religious rituals, said Ogalde, whose research appeared online October 14 in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

X-rays showed that the adult male—who was buried with items of social prestige such as panpipes, a four-pointed hat, and a snuffing tray—had damage near the nose, perhaps from sniffing.

As for the baby, Ogalde speculated that the mother had consumed the drug and passed it on to her offspring during pregnancy or breast-feeding.

"The fact this mind-altering substance was found even with a one-year-old shows how much a part of their life it was," said archaeologist Alexei Vranich of the University of California, Los Angeles, who did not participate in the study.

Habitual Users

The empire of the Tiwanaku once ranged from what is now northern Chile to southern Peru. (See a map of South America.) Between roughly A.D. 500 and 1000, they expanded from their origins on the Bolivian shores of Lake Titicaca via religious control and military might.

Elaborately decorated snuffing kits have been found in hundreds of Tiwanaku tombs. Archaeologists think these trays and tubes were used to inhale herbs, perhaps ceremonially.

Some snuff kits have been found bearing powder from the vilca tree, whose seeds are rich in hallucinogens. Also, X-rays of Tiwanaku skulls have in many cases revealed nasal damage that was likely caused by frequent sniffing.

The incorporation of snuffing imagery into Tiwanaku ceramics, woodwork, stonework, and textiles have been seen to suggest that snuffing rituals played an important role in Tiwanaku culture.

Still, no traces of hallucinogens had been found in Tiwanaku mummies until now, perhaps because the compounds broken down over time.

Drug Trade

The only plant in South America known to contain harmine is the jungle vine Banisteriopsis caapi, which is used by modern-day Amazonian natives to help make an infusion known as ayahuasca for shamanic rituals. (Read more about ayahuasca.)

This rain forest plant does not grow along the Atacama coast, suggesting extensive trade networks that brought the vine from as far as the Amazon rainforest. The Amazon is roughly 300 miles (500 kilometers) from the Azapa Valley, study co-author Ogalde said.

"A lot of people had suggested contact across the Amazon and the Atacama desert, and it's nice to have more hard data for that theory," said UCLA's Vranich.

The Tiwanaku may have actively searched for exotic hallucinogens to draw others to their culture, Vranich said.

"One of the sources of the mystique of the Tiwanaku—one of the reasons a lot of people may have subscribed to their religion—would have been such a mind-altering substance," he explained.

"It would have been a tremendous draw, especially when the rest of normal life in the rural Andes during that period would have been comparatively quite mundane and dull."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... 66493.html
 
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"It would have been a tremendous draw, especially when the rest of normal life in the rural Andes during that period would have been comparatively quite mundane and dull."
What an odd thing to say - I expect life anywhere at any time is quite mundane and dull compared to being on ayahuasca to be honest. By all accounts it's a very rough ride. If the double-ended incontinence doesn't getcher, the snakes and jaguars will ;)

It's clear from The Yage Letters that a lot of William Burroughs' weirder brainwrongs were dreamed up under its influence, and Ginsberg's utter terror at his experience comes across pretty well too, hehe.
 
Not that much of a revelation either, considering that from what we know, there's few if any cultures that didn't use some sort of psychoactive drug.
 
I remember hearing one tale, of an archaeologist who once found cannabis seeds and pollen, in a sample core of peat, taken from a site in the Orkneys.

Of course, some of his colleagues did reckon that there was a distinct possibility that they had actually fallen out of his pocket and contaminated the sample. :)
 
Cannabis is just hemp, useful in making rope - its presence doesn't have to indicate other uses.

I was surprised that the drug found wasn't coca, routinely chewed to combat the effect of altitude sickness in the Andes in historical times. Ayahuasca and other purgatives tended to be ritual drugs. AFAIK, the recreational use of hallucinogens was a European innovation, and excess recreational use is the chief form of abuse for most hallucinogens.

In fact, intoxicants generally don't seem to be much of a problem in the places they developed. The ritual use of tobacco did not create health problems in Americans, untilEuropeans figured out how to abuse it. Even in drug-paranoid modern America, the safety of peyote when used as part of a religious rite is recognized by law.
 
PeniG said:
Cannabis is just hemp, useful in making rope - its presence doesn't have to indicate other uses.

...
You've obviously never been to the Orkneys.
 
PeniG said:
...

In fact, intoxicants generally don't seem to be much of a problem in the places they developed. The ritual use of tobacco did not create health problems in Americans, untilEuropeans figured out how to abuse it. Even in drug-paranoid modern America, the safety of peyote when used as part of a religious rite is recognized by law.
Just because a drug has a ritual significance, it doesn't automatically become healthy.

To paraphrase Sun Bear, when he was asked about the health problems of tobacco and smoking, "Amongst the Native American peoples, tobacco is a sacred plant, if you're worried about it making you ill, I suggest you either smoke less, or pray more."

I suspect that peyote use, amongst certain Native American peoples, is recognised as legitimate, because it is a traditional part of their religious rituals, not necessarily because of it's safety.
 
The use of ayahuasca continues as a ritual sacrement in the Santo Diame and União do Vegetal churches outside South America.

As far as I know, cocaine leaves the body without much of a trace very quickly indeed, which is why it's the drug of choice for partying footballers.
 
You miss my point, Mr. Mercurious; probably because I wasn't clear enough. If an intoxicant, such as tobacco or peyote or alcohol, is treated as sacred, its use in such a context will not lead to health problems, because it is limited and undertaken in a controlled fashion. A knowledgeable, respectful use of such substances (including LSD and marijuana) in medicine may even be beneficial.

It's when you start using the substance casually, without regard for the substance's full range of properties, that problems arise. And these problems, if I've got my facts straight, most often arise when cultural lines are crossed.
 
Newly published research indicates ancient indigenous people in California used datura as a hallucinogenic ceremonial element, and that this usage was a communal event rather than something done by a lone / isolated shaman.
Pinwheel Cave rock art in California may depict hallucinogenic 'trance flower'

Just before going into a hallucinogenic trance, Indigenous Californians who had gathered in a cave likely looked up toward the rocky ceiling, where a pinwheel and big-eyed moth were painted in red.

This mysterious "pinwheel," is likely a depiction of the delicate, white flower of Datura wrightii, a powerful hallucinogen that the Chumash people took not only for ceremonial purposes but also for medicinal and supernatural ones, according to a new study. The moth is likely a species of hawk moth, known for its "loopy" intoxicated flight after slurping up Datura's nectar, the researchers said.

Chewed globs that humans stuck to the cave's ceiling provided more evidence of these ancient trips; these up to 400-year-old lumps, known as quids, contained the mind-altering drugs scopolamine and atropine, which are found in Datura, the researchers said. ...

The finding marks "the first clear evidence for the ingestion of hallucinogens at a rock art site, in this case, from Pinwheel Cave, California," the researchers wrote in the study, published online today (Nov. 23) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. ...

Radiocarbon dating shows the cave was used on and off again from about 1600 to the late 1800s. ...

The new discovery helps dismantle the myth of the lone shaman, going into a cave by himself to have a mystical experience ...

FULL STORY:
https://www.livescience.com/rock-art-hallucinogen-california.html

FULL PUBLISHED RESEARCH REPORT:
https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/early/2020/11/18/2014529117.full.pdf
 
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