image: Close-up image of the anterior of the smaller carved snuffing tablet showing the front of the anthropomorphic figures. view more
Credit: Image courtesy of Juan V. Albarracin-Jordan and José M. Capriles.
A study provides chemical evidence suggesting ritual use of psychoactive plants in pre-Columbian Bolivia. Previous archaeological studies have found evidence of ritual consumption of psychoactive plants among native cultures in South America. However, the evidence is fragmentary, preventing researchers from piecing together a coherent picture of hallucinogen use in ancient South America. Melanie Miller, José Capriles, and colleagues analyzed the chemical makeup of artifacts found in a 1,000-year-old ritual bundle recovered from a rock shelter in a river valley in southwestern Bolivia's Lípez highlands. Unearthed from layers of rubble, the bundle contained a large leather bag with a pair of carved wooden snuffing tablets, a snuffing tube, a pair of llama-bone spatulas, a textile headband, fragments of dried plant stems held together by wool and fiber strings, and a pouch stitched from three fox snouts. Radiocarbon dating traced the bundle to 905-1170 CE. Using liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry, the authors analyzed samples from the plant stems and fox-snout pouch, and detected at least five psychoactive compounds--cocaine, benzoylecgonine, harmine, bufotenine, and dimethyltryptamine--whose source plants are foreign to the Lípez highlands. The presence of cocaine suggests that the pouch held coca leaves, and the bufotenine signature hints that vilca or cebil (Anadenanthera colubrina) seeds were carried in the pouch, ground on the snuffing tablets, and inhaled using the snuffing tube. The co-occurrence of harmine, abundant in yage (Banisteriopsis caapi), and dimethyltryptamine, found in vilca and chacruna (Psychotria viridis), suggests that multiple plants may have been used to make ayahuasca, which can induce vivid hallucinogenic trips; the plants may have been consumed as a composite snuff or brewed into a potent beverage. The finding hints at ayahuasca consumption in shamanic rituals as old as 1,000 years. Despite the lack of human remains at the site, the findings raise the possibility that in pre-Columbian times shamans acquired multiple psychoactive plants either directly or through trading networks and used them in rituals to induce altered states of consciousness in hopes of communing with deities and deceased ancestors, according to the authors.
Article #19-02174: "Chemical evidence for the use of multiple psychotropic plants in a 1,000-year-old ritual bundle from South America," by Melanie J. Miller, Juan Albarracin-Jordan, Christine Moore, and José Capriles.
MEDIA CONTACTS: Melanie Miller, University of Otago, Dunedin, NEW ZEALAND; e-mail: melanie.miller@otago.ac.nz; José Capriles, Penn State University, Philadelphia, PA; tel: 814-880-3327; e-mail: juc555@psu.edu
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Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences