Blurs

Sacred Plant, Ancient Rituals, and a Living Mystery of the Andes High in the Andes, where mist moves across stone terraces and the night sky feels unusually close, a tall, columnar cactus has been used for thousands of years in spiritual and healing traditions.  Known widely as the San Pedro cactus, it stands at the intersection of botany, archaeology, and Indigenous cosmology—part medicine, part sacrament, and part enduring cultural mystery. To outsiders, it has often been misunderstood as just another hallucinogenic plant.  To the communities that have worked with it across generations, it is something far more structured and meaningful: a bridge between the human world and the unseen. Even today, debates continue about its role in ancient societies, its continuity through time, and what it reveals about human relationships with altered states of consciousness. A Plant with Deep Roots The San Pedro cactus refers most commonly to Echinopsis pachanoi, a fast-growing cactus nat...

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...

Deep in the highlands of northwestern Argentina, archaeologists discovered something remarkably unusual: two small tubular pipes carved from feline bone, dating back more than 4,000 years. They were found at Inca Cueva, in the Humahuaca region of Jujuy, and radiocarbon dating produced a date of approximately 2130 BC. The discovery becomes even more remarkable when scientists examined material associated with the pipes. Pipes made from feline bone The two pipes were approximately 13 cm and 11.2 cm long and were made from feline bone.  Archaeological research identifies them as part of the early smoking equipment found at Inca Cueva. The pipes came from Inca Cueva 7 (IC-c7) in the Puna of Jujuy, northwestern Argentina. The cave is at roughly 3,860 metres above sea level. They were recovered during excavations in 1972. They were made from feline bone, identified in later archaeological literature as Felis concolor — the animal now generally called the puma/cougar (Puma concolor). Inte...

LSD is one of the most powerful psychoactive compounds ever studied. It can radically alter perception, time, emotion and the sense of self — yet its effects begin with interactions between a remarkably small molecule and specific receptors in the brain.  Modern neuroscience is beginning to reveal why. LSD has accumulated an extraordinary cultural reputation. It has been associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, psychedelic art, spiritual experiences and some of the stranger chapters in modern drug history. But beneath all of that is a fascinating scientific question: How can such a small quantity of a chemical produce such a profound alteration in human consciousness? The answer appears to involve one particular receptor — 5-HT2A — and a cascade of changes in how groups of neurons communicate. Yet the deeper scientists look, the less LSD resembles a simple "hallucinogen". It provides a window into perception, brain networks, consciousness and potentially, although the...

What Science Actually Says About Cognition, Drugs, and Enhancement The idea is seductive: a pill, plant, or molecule that doesn’t just change mood or perception, but genuinely increases intelligence. Not just focus or energy, but reasoning ability, learning speed, memory, or creativity in a measurable, lasting way. It’s a theme that appears repeatedly in popular culture—from science fiction narratives of “limitless” cognition to modern discussions about nootropics and psychedelics. But behind the speculation lies a more complicated scientific reality. The short answer is that some psychoactive substances can temporarily enhance certain cognitive functions in specific contexts. However, there is currently no strong evidence that any psychoactive compound reliably increases general intelligence in a stable, long-term sense. To understand why, it helps to break the question apart. What Does “Smarter” Actually Mean? “Smarter” is not a single measurable trait. In cognitive science, intellig...