psychedelics

Humanity has been using drugs all its life. In fact, some of the oldest evidence dates back to 15,000 BC in Morocco. from Ephedra seeds or the mushrooms that they represented in cave paintings in Algeria in 9,000 BC or the use of hallucinogens derived from the San Pedro cactus in the Andes since at least 8,600 BC. But it is one thing to find remains of the plant and quite another to find chemical proof that our ancestors used drugs. What started in the 70s as a chance find of two pipes made of bones with traces of a hallucinogen has become, after decades of research, the oldest and most sophisticated direct chemical evidence of the use of hallucinogens in all of America. Context. We travel to 2100 BC, to the Preceramic period. The setting is the Puna of Jujuy, a high mountain plateau located in the extreme northwest of the Argentine Republic, which borders Bolivia and Chile. They lived there in caves such as Inca Cueva or Antofagasta de la Sierra groups of hunters and gatherers. The environment was extreme in terms of dryness and salinity, which has helped the organic materials to endure until today. Finally, it is worth mentioning the cebil (Anadenanthera macrocarpa), a leguminous plant whose seeds contain bufotenine, a tryptamine alkaloid with hallucinogenic effects that can be inhaled or smoked with a structure similar to the DMT family. The discovery. In the first site, in Inca Cueva and dated 2130 BC, two tubular bone pipes hidden in a cache without associated human remains. Inside there were remains of charring. Around it, remains of cebil and complete paraphernalia with decorated pumpkins and some bone spatulas to dose the hallucinogen. Their chemical analysis detected an alkaloid, N,N-dimethyltryptamine. At the Huachichocana site and dated 1450 BC, four stone pipes framed within a funeral trousseau of a young man, with other elements such as rattles or turtle shells. Chemical analysis is positive for alkaloids but negative for cebil. Pre-Columbian alkaloid trafficking. Was there cebil at 3,860 meters high? No, and that is one of the most striking things from the paper by Fernández Distel: Someone had taken him there. They sent young people to look for the cebil among tribes in the east of Salta in the summer months, when the fruit ripens. Your subsequent review contextualizes it: It was integrated into a broader transportation system that included other products such as feathers or fruit from the lowlands, hundreds of kilometers away. And the bone pipes did not come from humans, as they first hypothesized, but from pumas. Why is it important. Because Inca Cueva is the oldest record with direct chemical evidence in America for tryptamine hallucinogens, long before the from Chavín de Huántar in Peru. The paraphernalia of this site makes it clear that this was an elaborate ritual protocol, not something improvised or occasional. And the previous point shows the existence of long-distance trade networks, seasonal planning and advanced botanical knowledge. The hallucinogen was a precious commodity. The funerary context of Huachichocana is associated by Fernández Distel with a high mountain ritual, with the consideration of the deceased as a “shaman.” However, Torres reveals that consumption was a practice integrated into society: approximately 20% of men buried in some cemeteries in northern Chile took their hallucinogenic kit to the grave. How they did it. With excavations that took place between 1971 and 1976 with financing from CONICET and the University of Buenos Aires. The chemical analysis of the contents of the pipes was done using thin layer chromatography and in 1979, there was a second phase with gas chromatography. Thus, they detected seven peaks of plant alkaloids in Huachichocana that they could not identify. To date the remains they used Carbon 14. There are still many mysteries. That the Inca Cueva pipes appeared without human remains implies that we do not know who used them or under what circumstances. We also do not know why they used holes for pipes and not other elements. And although we know more or less what they consumed, there are still unknowns such as the recipes for their mixtures. In Xataka | The new era of psychedelia: how some “recreational” drugs want to help us with our mental health In Xataka | The most amazing data on drug consumption in Europe Cover | Christopher Walker and fr0ggy5