Humans experimented with drugs 23,000 years earlier than we thought

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We humans love our mind-altering substances. Cultures around the world have discovered, ritualized, and simply experimented with alcoholic drinks and ingestible drugs for millennia. However, recent archaeological evidence indicates humanity possibly began utilizing psychoactive plants much earlier than previously believed. Based on findings published in the journal Science Advances, some communities in present-day Indonesia enjoyed the effects of betel nuts as long as 25,000 years ago. This pushes the timeline over 23,000 years back from documented Neolithic and Bronze Age uses circa 1,500 BCE.

The areca nut (Areca catechu), better known as the betel nut, isn’t widely known in the United States, but it’s one of the world’s most popular intoxicants. Most frequently seen across southeast Asia cultures, its global usage only trails behind alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine. Betel nuts are prepared by grinding and processing the plant seeds with slaked lime (calcium hydroxide). This fine powder is often combined with additional ingredients such as flavoring spices or tobacco to make a “quid,” that is then chewed as a stimulant. There are millions of betel users today, with some estimates putting the global total at 1-in-10 people.

Many researchers contend that most human intoxicant use began with fermented alcoholic drinks, amid the rise of farming during the Neolithic era about 13,000 years ago. Adam Brumm, one of the study’s co-author and an archaeologist at Australia’s Griffith University, believes otherwise.

“This theory fails to account for the possibility that very ancient drug-taking lies at the roots of our most commonly used psychoactive substances,” he explained in a university profile.

Betel nut – World's oldest known drug habit dates back to Ice Age

Brumm and his team cite evidence gathered from the extremely rare skeletal remains of two early human foragers discovered on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. The older of the two lived between 25,000 and 16,000 years ago, while the younger individual is 7,600 to 6,300 years old. Unlike many other documented skeletons from the region, these hunter-gathers both exhibit rarely seen dental damage in the form of deep, curved grooves in the teeth. Researchers theorized this unexpected deterioration stemmed from a never-before-identified practice of regularly sucking on entire betel nuts.

But there was a problem—this hypothesis contradicted earlier studies of betel nut usage. Many scientists believe the drug’s primary neuroactive alkaloid, called arecoline, is only noticeable after chewing betel nuts processed with slaked lime. Lab experiments conducted by Brumm’s group suggest this isn’t necessarily always the case. To test their theory, researchers soaked betel nuts in artificial saliva, then introduced the mixtures to exposed cloned human receptors grown from frog egg cells. These receptors included specific proteins that function as molecular switches overseeing neural activity.

The study authors discovered that even simply sucking on whole betel nuts is all it takes to release enough arecoline to elicit altered neural activity and physiological effects. To further bolster their findings, biochemists even flagged arceoline traces in the dental tissue of both hunter-gatherers.

However, the ancient humans living on Sulawesi didn’t necessarily ingest betel nuts for recreational use. Unprocessed nuts likely offer milder effects, but arceoline remains a natural analgesic. Knowing this, the study’s authors surmise these betel nut habits were self-reinforcing.

“Sucking these hard, abrasive seeds wore down the foragers’ teeth so badly that in some cases the inner pulp chamber became completely exposed,” explained Brumm. “So while this habit may have been a remedy for toothache, years of prolonged nut-sucking eventually caused much worse dental health problems, creating a cycle of continued habitual use.”

The implications go far beyond revising the timeline of humanity’s relationship with mind-altering substances. If true, this means at least some ancient hunter-gatherer cultures discovered psychoactive properties before the development of agriculture.

“The study implies that some modern drug-taking behaviors are deeply rooted in forager traditions,” added Brumm.