Blurs

What if humans were deliberately using mind-altering plants thousands of years before farming, permanent settlements or the first known alcoholic drinks? A new archaeological discovery from the Indonesian island of Sulawesi suggests that humans may have been using a psychoactive plant as far back as 25,000 years ago. The evidence comes not from a written record, a ceremonial object or a preserved stash of plants. It comes from human teeth. A strange pattern in ancient teeth Researchers examining the remains of two prehistoric individuals from Sulawesi noticed something unusual. Their teeth contained deep, rounded grooves and extensive wear that could not easily be explained by ordinary eating. The older individual lived sometime between approximately 25,000 and 16,000 years ago, during the last Ice Age. The second individual lived thousands of years later, approximately 7,600–6,300 years ago. Despite the enormous gap between them, both showed remarkably similar patterns of dental damag...