

Prehistoric High Times: Early Humans Used Magic Mushrooms, Opium - diodorus
http://www.livescience.com/49666-prehistoric-humans-psychoactive-drugs.html

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wutbrodo
I wonder if this will make it into the books on the Paleo diet.

More seriously, a lot of the conversation around drugs assumed that drugs
(from which alcohol is inconsistently excluded) are an unnatural and
uncontrollable modern disease. This is also the perspective that predominates
in political discussion. The understanding that the low level of drug use
"accepted" by modern society is as much a cultural construct as higher levels
in the past would go a long way into making our drug policy more sane.

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yawz
When I visited Newgrange in Ireland, one of the theories behind the drawings
was the use of hallucinogenics.

[[http://anyasgarden.com/blog/wp-
content/uploads/2012/12/Newgr...](http://anyasgarden.com/blog/wp-
content/uploads/2012/12/Newgrange_Ireland.jpg)]

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contingencies
Hrrm, certainly looks believably like the visual effect of hallucinogens,
doesn't it?

Strangely, I saw a program on those Irish sites just yesterday spanning from
Sligo
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_Sligo#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_Sligo#History)
in the west to Meath
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_Meath#Places_of_interes...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_Meath#Places_of_interest)
in the east which seemed to be implying that the circles represented a
religious movement that was pan-European and demonstrably encompassed at least
north-western France, Ireland, and northern Scotland. They also divided it in
to two periods, an earlier 'earth worship' phase and a later 'sky worship'
phase, though much of the interpretation seemed to be pretty close to pure
conjecture, they did identify advances in astronomy may have enabled superior
navigation leading to technology exchange, seasonal migration, better timed
fishing expeditions and wealth from trade. The program also featured a single
glyph inside a monolithic grave. Clearly there was some form of pictographic
script coming in to use at the time.

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zinkem
Terrence McKenna explores this hypothesis in his book 'Food of the Gods.' Part
speculation, part historical account of the role of chemicals in human
culture. Great read if you're interested in this kind of thing.

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Ologn
Actually, wheat (triticum) has opiods, and a small percentage of people have
hyper-sensitive reactions to those opiods.

It's quite possible that wheat was originally harvested not to make bread but
to get people high. There are scientific papers on the psychoactive effects of
Triticum.

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contingencies
Betel is a really good buzz and clearly has medicinal utility. If you get a
chance, try it! Don't worry, your teeth won't change color overnight... that
takes years.

