Stone Age man took drugs, say scientists
Scientists have discovered evidence suggesting Stone Age man used herbal mixtures to get high.

By Jonathan Wynne-Jones
Last Updated: 12:50AM BST 19 Oct 2008
It has long been suspected that humans have an ancient history of drug use, but there has been a lack of proof to support the theory.
Now, however, researchers have found equipment used to prepare hallucinogenic drugs for sniffing, and dated them back to prehistoric South American tribes.
Quetta Kaye, of University College London, and Scott Fitzpatrick, an archeologist from North Carolina State University, made the breakthrough on the Caribbean island of Carriacou.
They found ceramic bowls, as well as tubes for inhaling drug fumes or powders, which appear to have originated in South America between 100BC and 400BC and were then carried 400 miles to the islands.
While the use of such paraphernalia for inhaling drugs is well-known, the age of the bowls has thrown new light on how long humans have been taking drugs.
Scientists believe that the drug being used was cohoba, a hallucinogen made from the beans of a mimosa species. Drugs such as cannabis were not found in the Caribbean then.
Opiates can be obtained from species such as poppies, while fungi, which was widespread, may also have been used.
Archeologists have suggested that humans were extracting mind-expanding drugs from mescal beans and peyote cacti as far back as 5,000 years ago, but have not found direct evidence that this is true.
They consider that drugs were being used to induce spiritual or trance-like states by people who had religious beliefs.

Archeologists have suggested that humans were extracting mind-expanding drugs from mescal beans and peyote cacti as far back as 5,000 years ago, but have not found direct evidence that this is true.

During Columbus' second voyage to the Americas, 1493-1496, the Admiral himself commented on a mysterious "powder" which the "kings" of the Taíno Indians of the island of Hispaniola would "snuff up," and that "with this powder they lose consciousness and become like drunken men" (Torres 1988; Wassén 1967). Columbus commissioned Friar Ramón Pané to study the customs of the Taíno, and Pané wrote of the practice of the buhuitihu or shaman who "takes a certain powder calledcohoba snuffing it up his nose, which intoxicates them so they do not know what they do�" (Wassén 1967) . Pané also referred to the drug and cogioba, and in the later text of Peter Martyr the name is given as kohobba. More than four centuries were to pass before cohoba was definitively identified by American ethnobotanist W.E.Safford as a preparation of the seeds of Piptadenia peregrina, today more correctly known as Anadenanthera peregrina (Reis Althschul 1972; Safford 1916). While some had earlier confused cohoba with tobacco, also used by the Taíno, Safford in part based his identification on the widespread use of A. peregrina snuff under the name yopo by various South American Indian groups of the Orinoco River basin.. Archaeological remains in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Domincan Republic, Haiti, Perú and Puerto Rico testify to the broad range and antiquity of entheogenic snuff use in the Caribbean and South America (Cordy-Collins 1982; Franch 1982; Furst 1947b; Pagan Perdomo 1982;Torres 1981; Torres 1987; Torres 1992; Torres et al 1991; Wassén 1965; Wassén 1967; Wassén & Holmstead 1963). There is evidence of the modern survival of Anadenanthera snuff use among the Mataco Indians of the Río Bermejo and Río Pilcomayo area of Argentina (Repke 1992; Torres 1992) and it was recently reported that three species are used as inebriants by Paraguayan Indians: Anadenanthera peregrina (curupáy). A. colubrina var. cébil (= Piptadenia macrocarpa; curupáy-curú and A. Rigida ( curupáy-rá; Costantini 1975). As late as 1976, snuffs made from A. peregrina were being prepared in the Orinoco basin (Brewer-Carias & Steyermark 1976).