from the ♫-Pass-the-kouchie-pon-the-lef'-hand-side-♫ dept.
The Conversation discusses the archeological time line indicating the earliest known usage of various psychoactive substances. They conclude that it is most likely that use of psychoactive substances mostly began relatively late in our history. It probably began after the Neolithic Revolution in 10,000 BC when we invented farming and civilisation. Wine, betel, and cannabis rank among those with the earliest evidence of use found so far.
Archaeology suggests alcohol and drugs date back millennia, to early agricultural societies. But there’s little evidence early hunter-gatherers used them. That implies something about agricultural societies and the civilisations they gave rise to promoted substance use. But why?
It’s possible large civilisations simply drive innovation of all kinds: in ceramics, textiles, metals – and psychoactive substances. Perhaps alcohol and drugs also promoted civilisation – drinking can help people socialise, altered perspectives encourage creativity, and caffeine makes us productive. And it may just be safer to get drunk or high in a city than the savannah.
A darker possibility is that psychoactive substance use developed in response to civilisation’s ills. Large societies create large problems – wars, plagues, inequalities in wealth and power – against which individuals are relatively powerless. Perhaps when people couldn’t change their circumstances, they decided to change their minds.
It’s a complex problem. Just thinking about it makes me want to grab a beer.
Some psychoactive compounds are stimulants and increase alertness, others decrease it. Some affect mood, and others alter perception of reality.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 24 2021, @10:39PM (21 children)
First, animals are well-known to enjoy fermented fruit. It's not even strange, and some fruit are much better when fermented; medlars spring to mind. The idea that early humans would have abstained is just strange.
Second, it depends upon the kind of drugs. Some can be gathered wild as part of a general hunter-gatherer existence (besides fermented fruit there are things like psilocybin, morning glory, poppies, cannabis, peyote and khat).
Third it seems probable that what really took off with regular agriculture was fermentation, because much fermentation takes enough time that it works best for a settlement. This includes everything from sauerkraut to kimchi, cheese to duck eggs but of course includes pretty much all forms of alcohol as well as leavened bread.
If Homo Habilis was getting wired on khat regularly, I bet the main reason that we don't know is that they didn't really feel like writing anything down while chewing on those leaves.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 24 2021, @11:04PM (6 children)
I've heard compelling arguments that agriculture was most likely developed for the sole purpose of producing alcohol. Beer is certainly much safer than drinking water.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 25 2021, @12:31AM (4 children)
> Beer is certainly much safer than drinking water.
Unless you're driving or operating heavy machinery.
(Score: 1, Touché) by HammeredGlass on Sunday July 25 2021, @01:20AM
Lot of that happened in Ur.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 25 2021, @03:14AM (2 children)
Hold my mead.
(Score: 2) by Eratosthenes on Sunday July 25 2021, @05:29AM (1 child)
Antonio Bandaras, in "The Thirteenth Warrior":
Like how bacon is not technically pork, you know.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 25 2021, @08:16AM
Legitt - it's just the skin, not the pork.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 25 2021, @03:04PM
Maybe in some areas [and cultures] it was, and in others agriculture was an accidental discovery. I can't imagine it was a global constant, though, there's a lot of geographical diversity which, it follows, a lot of developmental diversity.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday July 24 2021, @11:31PM
Don't forget grog: making water safe to drink for 6 millennia.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by fakefuck39 on Saturday July 24 2021, @11:58PM (4 children)
Yeah, this sounds like complete BS. In fact, since we're looking at human animals, instead of guessing, why not just look at other animals. Dolphins eat toxic fish to get high. Dolphins aren't farmers.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/dolphins-seem-to-use-toxic-pufferfish-to-get-high-180948219/ [smithsonianmag.com]
In fact, plenty of animals get high.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17373-animals-on-drugs-11-unlikely-highs/ [newscientist.com]
so, before we started farming, I guess we didn't get high, you know, because we had those christian family values? strange how when we look at modern tribes that don't really farm, the classic stereotype is them making some crazy cactus brew and doing a crazy dance to make it rain.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/even-cavemen-liked-to-get_n_5316914 [huffpost.com]
"examples suggestive of mind-altering substance use by early hominids was found at Shanidar IV, a Neanderthal burial site from roughly 60,000 B.C."
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2363958/Did-cavemen-DRUGS-New-study-claims-early-paintings-prehistoric-man-high-psychedelic-plants.html [dailymail.co.uk]
"Researchers from Tokyo studied pictures of cave markings from around the world and concluded that the patterns made by the early artists resemble those created during tests of modern-day humans when they were under the influence of drugs."
So where does this claim come from then? Oh, they found 10k year old weed stuck in some teeth, and drew the wrong conclusion from that. Which is weird, because googling the author, Nicholas Longrich, he seems to be fairly well known in the field of evolutionary biology, educated at Princeton and Yale. So I'm probably wrong, and he's probably right, but it would have been nice if the article directly addressed basic evidence to the contrary that can be found by the 60 second google search I did, because that evidence to the contrary was gathered by his peers in the field.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 25 2021, @12:57AM
> before we started farming, I guess we didn't get high, you know, because we had those christian family values?
Everyone knows drugs are bad, mmkay? And experimenting with consciousness is bad, mmkay? Obvious stuff.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday July 25 2021, @02:18AM
It's probably down to semantics, and this is a case of "hard" evidence of drug use in a human. The liklihood that it's the first use is about zero, the author may be implying organized intentional use rather than incidental mushroom ingestion and the like but if they really think that groups of pre-hominds didn't organize mind altering "parties" intentionally, then, yeah, been up in that Ivory tower smoking god knows what for far too long.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RamiK on Sunday July 25 2021, @04:42AM (1 child)
Monkeys and chimps too: https://vinepair.com/booze-news/monkeys-and-chimpanzees-are-making-their-own-wine/ [vinepair.com]
compiling...
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Sunday July 25 2021, @04:59AM
https://www.reddit.com/r/softwaregore/comments/4zeqtq/it_says_atm_out_of_order/d6vv63s/ [reddit.com]
(Score: 4, Funny) by driverless on Sunday July 25 2021, @05:43AM (4 children)
I thought humans start experimenting with alcohol and drugs in their early to mid-teens...
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 25 2021, @08:40AM (3 children)
For me, it was 4pm.
(Score: 3, Touché) by driverless on Sunday July 25 2021, @09:01AM (2 children)
For me it was a shade closer to 4:20.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 25 2021, @05:33PM
What are you, some kind of health fanatic?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 25 2021, @07:00PM
Good music for 4:20
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Whiter_Shade_of_Pale [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Sunday July 25 2021, @10:18AM
Pretty much this. Imagine two potheads 10000 years ago
Duuuude, we should totally write this down.
Noooo, not nooooow...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 25 2021, @08:16PM
right. this is what anyone with half a brain would say. the researchers are ass hats.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday July 26 2021, @03:45PM
Try googling for: dogs eating hallucinogenic mushrooms
Some of the first hits suggest that dogs get poisoned from doing this. I've seen one YouTube video of a dog that made a habit of the mushrooms in order to have the altered state of dog consciousness. The owner could still pick up the dog and move it to a safe space.TM
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 24 2021, @10:50PM (2 children)
I think it's important to make a distinction between, 'drugs,' and, 'alcohol.' Alcohol is a waste byproduct of organisms; and interestingly enough. Cannabis, mushrooms, coffee plants and the like, all produce chemicals capable of interacting with the receptors in our brain tissues. These, 'plants,' probably use these chemicals either as a defense mechanism, or arguably, as a seductants, to promote their reproduction and/or cultivation.
Therefore, I think it's likely alcohol comes into the picture for agricultural societies; however, I think it's more likely the hunter gatherer types, all knew about the psychedelic mushroom and other intoxicating plants. This is where we get the Shaman from. The Shaman is the healer; he or she, has knowledge of the flora and fauna; and if a plant helps one to commune with the ancestors, the spirits, the animals, the plants, and all that stuff; I believe it's highly likely such things were being done far before the advent of agrarian societies. Alcohol is what you discover when stored excess grains or what not, start to rot out, and yet you eat it anyway, and discover an intoxicating effect. Alcohol is not like other drugs; it's not a drug. It has a physical effect ON the brain itself; it doesn't really, 'interact with it,' at the receptor level, at least not to my knowledge. It just sort of shuts the brain off at a level relative to how much is consumed.
So, it's quite likely that, mankind began using drugs, as soon as it became advantageous to do so. When the chemicals these plants had in them became seductants as opposed to, essentially just poisons that were employed to protect them, who can say. An interesting point to ponder is that, perhaps the reason these chemicals became received by mankind as seductants, as opposed to bitter poisons, may have to do with the size of our neocortex. If you imagine a mountain, being the only tool you can employ to, 'plan,' the path ahead of you, and you analogize the size of our neocortex, to our ability to, 'see ahead,' it may very well be that we just have enough, 'foresight,' to map the start and end point of the journey these chemicals can take us on; such that, we have the faculties to employ a usefulness to them.
Is it possible these plants aided in the evolution of our reasoning capacity, perhaps. However, it's likely these types of plants were always there, always doing there thing, probably just protecting themselves. The happy accident of their defense chemicals becoming human seductants is probably in tune with the accident of our neocortical development.
So, that's my take, man has communing with the ancestors and taking, 'drugs,' for probably far longer than recorded history; and probably far before agrarian life. Agrarian life just gave us booze, and it also gave us ergot...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 25 2021, @12:45AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Bvi8206lpA [youtube.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by sjames on Sunday July 25 2021, @02:16AM
Alcohol is very much a drug that acts on the GABA receptors in the brain. The same receptor is acted on by benzos (which is why benzos are sometimes given to help the DTs).
Unlike benzos, alcohol is a bit sloppy and diffuse in it's actions and has secondary effects on many other receptors as well.
I think you are likely correct that alcohol came after agriculture (for the most part) and intoxicating plants were probably used by hunter-gatherers.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 24 2021, @10:52PM
I don't know about humans, but for me it would when I was a little teen schumuck so that put it around 70/80'ish?
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by fustakrakich on Saturday July 24 2021, @11:19PM (6 children)
So which came first? The spliff, or the munchies?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 25 2021, @08:23AM
Would you believe if I said yo momma came first, then we gave her some spliff and she took it in turns blowing all your friends in a circle. Then she came again.
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Sunday July 25 2021, @03:27PM (3 children)
Why is mixing weed with tobacco so popular in europe?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 25 2021, @05:35PM (1 child)
uh, because it gets you more fucked up. is there another reason for taking drugs?
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Monday July 26 2021, @10:56PM
You're doing it wrong: weed is supposed to get you high.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday July 25 2021, @06:11PM
Why do people mix gin and vodka? Why was the original comment modded down? Food preparation is just as experimental. There is no reason to believe it wasn't simultaneous with drugs/alcohol, as they were/are often consumed together. Some of the best recipes are accidental.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 26 2021, @02:42AM
Offtopic
Obvious mod abuse...
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 25 2021, @01:30AM (2 children)
Not sure on the source of this, might have been green site.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Sunday July 25 2021, @06:01AM
Actually, God woke up one morning and decided to visit his local coffee shop for breakfast. "I'd like an everything bagel", He said. And so it began.
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(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday July 26 2021, @03:50PM
In the Bible, it was Noah who is first recorded to get drunk. Also first recorded to have planted a vineyard.
It was one of the first things Noah did after getting off the arc. He got drunk and naked.
After being couped up with animals, and even worse, with family, for 150 days.
Genesis 9:
[20] Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded[a] to plant a vineyard. [21] When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. [22] Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father naked and told his two brothers outside. [23] But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked in backward and covered their father’s naked body. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father naked.
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(Score: 5, Interesting) by Spamalope on Sunday July 25 2021, @01:42AM (1 child)
It's possible humans co-evolved with psychedelic mushrooms/fungus.
It seems to be central to shamanic practice.
It's likely core to the Greco-Roman religious cult mysteries.
We have receptors for proteins the fungus makes. Why? (is there some other function?) How long would that take to evolve? Recent clinical study indicates a therapeutic, lasting (possibly life long) result from a single dose. That points to origins that might pre-date homo-sapiens sapiens.
The oldest finding in archaeology is in no way an origin date, but rather an 'already in use before this' date. The modern biology of humans and Psilocybin as an example suggest distant origins. It'll be interesting to see if the current lines of research shed further light on the mystery. (I'm curious if they find our brains appear to be evolved for the drug - that could push dates back a great distance)
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 25 2021, @04:28PM
I suspect by protein receptors you're talking about serotonin receptors. That's what Psilocin (psilocin is the metabolite of psilocybin, but is the actual psychoactive) interacts with. Psilocin is derived from a tryptamine molecule, which is shared with serotonin. Dimethyl Tryptamine (DMT) is "widely found in plants and animals" it is also a derivative of tryptamine and it also effects the serotonin receptors.
Because I'm lazy I'm not going to look up sources of tryptamine, which itself is evidently widely present in plant life by dint of our above observation on DMT. None of this is particularly impressive, a good portion of our systems are shared, right? Beyond extraordinarily distant common ancestry. DNA and protein, and all the extant combinations of biologically derived molecules. So it's kinda crazy that a fungus evolved and selected to make psilocybin and psilocin, but it's totally in line with probability unfolding over millions of years. It's even less crazy because you see a number of fungus species producing this, it's a "common" evolutionary path. But there's also 5-MeO-DMT which is produced by plants, and also a toad, and is psychoactive without the use of an MAOI inhibitor - that's actually kind of bananas it's like a theory of mind sort of thing, but randomness finds a way. An MAOI is "monoamine oxidase inhibitor" tryptamine is a monoamine, so this guy (monoamine oxidase) is catalyzing the oxidation reaction of DMT which reduces or totally eliminates its psychoactive effects orally. But 5-MeO-DMT mitigates this oxidation stage which is kinda crazy. But any poison or venom is kinda crazy too, but you see a lot of them of various different mechanisms, myotoxins and neurotoxins both interact with receptors. Poisons are really no different and can use a variety of receptors against the victim, think peppers. And peppers are kind of interesting because they cause downstream effects like vasodilation as a product of nociceptory (hot/cold/pressure/cut) stimulation.
That's not to say I'm discrediting the co-evolution hypothesis, just that it's far more straight forward and far less direct. I mean, everything kinda co-evolves. We've used very small doses of very toxic compounds for a very long time as medicine. Atropine is a good example of everything I've discussed above. And lead is an element that can act on receptors, so it isn't necessarily just organic molecules derived from evolutionary dice rolling, but just chemical happenstance. A better argument for co-evolution might be cannabis, "The human brain has more cannabinoid receptors than any other G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) type." which might point to something somewhere, or is mere coincidence but nonetheless interesting.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 25 2021, @01:51AM
What's going on here? It's like time went back into the past?
Its like dejavu all over again.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 25 2021, @08:40AM
Since we are animals... I don't mean now, I mean since before we were even human, is that clear? The question is complete BS as we see today drunk bears or elephants or birds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEqobCtmZ1w [youtube.com]
also shrooms,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkCS9ePWuLU [youtube.com]
http://www.drugdiscoverytoday.com/view/14778/why-reindeer-love-magic-mushrooms/ [drugdiscoverytoday.com]
so WTF? Stop looking for 'evidence' of people's behaviour when that behaviour predates people being people. I wouldn't be surprised if someone found some dinosaur that was high on something.
Maybe what they should look for is earliest evidence of laws that are designed to stop you from eating these things. Yes, religious texts like the Bible is an easy manual for that, but I mean in the religions that existed before monotheism.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Opportunist on Sunday July 25 2021, @05:29PM
Usually around college age. Some start earlier.
Next question?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 25 2021, @05:48PM
"beer" was as disinfected as "your glass of hydration" came during those dark times.
i dunno why people still drink beer, now that we can make safe drinking water.
it's probably the same reason people still wear paris-open-sewer parfum: nostalgia. or maybe it's a social norm that we forgot the reason for; you know ... "everybody else does it".